When Wings are Earned

Chapters

Chapter 1: Courage
Chapter 2: To Learn
Chapter 3: When to Persevere
Chapter 4: When Wings Are Earned

Chapter 1: Courage

Courage, that was what Scootaloo needed right now. How long had the orange pegasus filly with the purple mane been gazing up at that small cloud with the prismatic tail hairs draped over the edge? Truth was she didn’t know. What she did know was that the pony she idolized was napping on that low-lying cloud. Scootaloo longed to just fly up to that cloud and wake her idol gently to ask for help. Of course if she could do that then she wouldn’t need to ask for help at all. So she sat there trying to muster the courage to wake her personal hero.

Glancing around the park Scootaloo saw that she had it more or less to herself and the sleeping pegasus above. Now was as good a time as ever she figured and so she called out, “Rainbow Dash!” The prismatic tail on the cloud flinched, then settled bask into place. Scootaloo called out a second time. This time the tail disappeared and was soon replaced by the sky blue face of the filly’s hero.

“Oh, hey squirt. What’s up?” Dash asked, with a single eyebrow raised over her rose red eyes.

Now that the question was posed there was no going back. Sighing Scootaloo answered, “I wanted to ask, can you help me with something?”

Rainbow Dash ran a hoof through her prismatic mane, pondering the question for a moment. Sometimes helping out the crusaders meant watching their hilarious attempts to earn their cutie marks. But other times the attempts could prove quite boring to watch or tedious to help clean up afterwards. Then she caught the filly’s choice of words, namely ‘help me’ not ‘help us’.

“What did you have in mind?” Dash asked, with her eyebrow still raised, trying not to commit to anything until she thought it would be worth her time.

Not the response Scootaloo was hoping for, but at least it wasn’t a ‘no’, so she gathered what little courage she could and blurted out, “Can you teach me to fly?”

Rainbow Dash put on a confident smile in response the question. She knew Scootaloo was a weak flyer so this question had to come eventually. “No problem Scoots! What did we want to start on? Loop-d-loops? Spiral dives?” she asked, performing each as she came down from the cloud to land at the filly’s side.

“Getting off the ground,” Scootaloo answered, lowering her ears and purple eyes, turning away.

“Heh, I actually had you going there didn’t I,” Rainbow Dash laughed for a moment.

“Yeah, guess you did,” the filly answered with a weak flutter of her wings. but still hanging her head low. A blush appearing on her cheeks, through her fur.

Dash pondered the situation seriously for a moment before saying, “Okay enough fun and games, let’s get you airborne.”

“Really? You’ll teach me!?” Scootaloo asked, smiling ear to ear.

Recalling a certain camping trip Rainbow Dash answered, “Of course I will! I said I’d take you under my wing, didn’t I? Come on.”

* * * * * * *

The two soon found themselves in the grassy field under Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, away from the prying eyes of passersby. “Alright, show me what you’ve got,” Dash commanded her student.

Bringing her wings to life and angling all her thrust straight down, Scootaloo coiled her legs and leapt as high as she could. Hovering there for a moment before she wobbled some, and then came down, having to catch herself with her front legs to keep from hitting the ground. Pushing herself off with just her front legs she wobbled again, this time having to set her hind legs down to stop the fall. Once more she thrust herself upward only to get the same result, again catching herself with her front legs to stop her body from touching the ground.

“That’s enough,” Rainbow Dash said bluntly.

Scootaloo set her remaining hooves down and stopped trying to fly. “Was I that bad?” she asked.

“No, well maybe, I don’t know. But I can’t see what I need to, to figure out what you’re doing wrong,” Rainbow Dash answered, semi-distracted as she was trying to think of an alternate way to get the information she needed. “Try firing up your wings the way you do on your scooter,” she suggested.

Scootaloo obeyed, and fired up her wings scooter style, the dirt under her hooves gave way and she started sliding forward. First she slowed her wings then Dash’s hoof pressed agents her chest, stopping her forward movement.

“Don’t stop,” Rainbow Dash commanded.

Nodding Scootaloo brought her wings back up to speed. She became curious as to how this was supposed to help anything. Then she noticed her mentor holding out her own wing just over Scootaloo’s wing. Dash then moved her wing behind and then below Scootaloo’s wings, feeling the air currents the young pegasus was kicking up with her wings.

“You can stop now,” Rainbow Dash said, with a bit of a forced smile and a nod.

Seeing the expecting look on her student’s face, Rainbow scrambled in her mind to come up with something to say, ultimately going with the blunt truth, “Okay two things. First, stop wasting your time trying to hover. Second, you need to stop using a high speed wing-form when aiming for basic flight.”

“Wha-huh?” was Scootaloo’s first response. Once she'd let her mentor’s words filter through her mind she added, “What’s a high speed wing-form?”

“It’s the way you beat your wings, in your case, the way you leave them fully extended on both the up and down beats and just change the angle to get maximum thrust the whole time. A pure thrust arrangement like that if fine if you’re already flying really fast, but it's useless for getting off the ground to begin with.”

Realizing the first part of Rainbow Dash’s advice, Scootaloo timidly asked, “W-What, do you mean wasting my time trying to hover?”

Hearing the distress in the question, Dash realized she was treading on thin ice, and about to discourage her student. “Hey, I’m not saying you won’t hover. Its just clear that you’re a really weak flyer right now, so you need to get basic flight down before you move on to the hardest form of flight.”

“Hardest?” Scootaloo asked.

“Yeah, have you heard that saying about needing to learn to crawl before you can learn to run?”

“Yes.”

“Well flying is kinda backwards from that, in the air the faster you are going the easier it is to fly.”

Scootaloo pondered this for a moment before conceding it made no sense. “Really?” she asked.

Seeing Scootaloo didn’t get it, Rainbow Dash tried to think of how to make her student see the truth of her words. Extending her wings out to her sides she said, “Do this.” Scootaloo held her wings out to the side as well. “Good, now feel you wings,” Dash said, closing her eyes and adding a moment later, “Not like that.”

Scootaloo pulled her hoof away from her wing and looked back to her mentor. Rainbow Dash was just standing still, eyes closed and wings held out to her sides. Mimicking the pose she stood there for a few minutes until Dash broke the silence, “What do you feel?”

Standing still Scootaloo had to think about the question for a bit before she could find an answer. “I feel my wings getting a little tired.” Was all she could come up with.

“Why?” Rainbow Dash asked, breathing an unsatisfied sigh at her student’s response.

“Because I’m holding them up,” the filly said, not knowing how else to answer such an obvious question.

“And that makes you’re wings tired, because?” Dash said, egging her student on.

“Gravity pulls them down?” she answered, effectively restating the obvious.

“Good, keep your wings out and follow me,” Rainbow Dash said, finally satisfied.

Scootaloo opened her eyes and saw Rainbow Dash trotting off with her wings still held out to the sides, so Scootaloo ran after her. Every time she got near Dash, she sped up until Scootaloo was in a full gallop just trying to keep up.

“Slow down! I can’t run that fast!” Scootaloo called out, breathing heavily from the running.

Rainbow Dash looked back to her student and commanded, “Forget your legs, feel your wings.”

Between breaths the filly tried to obey, but with her legs crying out for rest it took awhile before she felt that she was no longer holding her wings up, but now she was holding them down. “They’re… tugging… up?” she said, confused and out of breath.

“Exactly, that’s what wings do. The faster you move forward the more lift they give you. That’s why hovering is the hardest form of flight, because you aren’t moving forward at all,” Rainbow Dash said, as she came to a halt and her thankful student flopped down beside her. “Yeah, you can take five. I’ll be right back,” Dash added, before taking off toward her cloud house.

Forward movement, why hadn’t Scootaloo noticed that upward tug on her wings when she rode her scooter? It seemed so obvious now that it had been pointed out to her, but she still couldn’t help but wonder how she hadn’t felt the difference between a moving wing and a stationary one before today.

The orange filly didn’t need much rest to recover from the earlier sprint. Which was good because Rainbow Dash didn’t take anywhere near five minutes to return, sporting an unknown cylindrical object, with a small tube coming out of its base, strapped to her front left leg.

“What’s that?” Scootaloo asked.

“An air speed gauge. I want to see what your minimum glide speed is,” Dash answered. “Anyway to do that I need you to show me your best glide form.”

“I can’t even fly. How am I suppose to show you how I’d glide?” Scootaloo whimpered.

The cyan pegasus rolled her eyes, this was going to be a long day. “Lay down and pretend you're flying. Now how would you hold yourself?”

Lying down in the grass, Scootaloo mimicked the form she had seen from most airborne pegasi. Holding her legs inline with the rest of her body and wings out to the sides.

“Not bad,” Rainbow Dash commented, while proceeding to take Scootaloo’s wing in her mouth and with her hoof force them into a slightly different form. “Think you can remember this form?” A nod was all the answer Dash needed before prompting her student to climb on her back.

Once Scootaloo had wrapped her legs around Rainbow Dash’s body her mentor wasted no time leaping into the air, and with a powerful beat of her wings the two were off into the sky. They flew higher and higher, leaving the cloud house far below. Passing low laying clouds and then the higher ones. Scootaloo wondered just how high Dash was going to take her.

Coming to a hover thousands of feet above the ground, Rainbow Dash said, “Alright get back into that glide form I showed you,”

Scootaloo froze as she realized what was about to happen. “You want me to jump? But what if I can’t glide?”

Dash laughed with her reply, “Trust me, you’ll glide. And besides I’ll be right next to you.”

That was enough for Scootaloo to release her grip on the pony holding her in the sky and flatten herself out, trying to get as close to the way she had practiced on the ground.

With a reassuring smile and a nod Rainbow Dash stopped flapping her wings and fell into a dive, immediately pulling herself away from underneath her student.

Scootaloo had expected being dumped into the open sky, but even so she couldn’t stop herself from a small yelp of surprise when it happened. Now that she was falling faster and faster through the sky, her eyes widened in fright as the ground below filled her vision. For a moment she spotted a sky blue wing off to her side, just far enough in front of her that she didn’t need to turn her head to see her hero was only feet away diving along side her. That thought calmed her enough to try and get back into her glide form.

New fears attacked Scootaloo’s mind as she noticed how much closer the ground seemed, even if it was still thousands of feet below. How fast was she falling now? Shouldn’t something have happened by now? She dared a glance to the side to see her mentor carefully watching her and immediately Dash’s hoof came out to her side.

“Eyes forward!” Rainbow Dash shouted, barely audible over the rush of the wind.

Scootaloo felt that her body was trying to swerve to the side rather than continue the straight down dive and Dash’s hoof was the only thing keeping her from doing so. Once she had pulled her head back inline she felt the pressure on her side fade and soon after the hoof holding her in line pulled away from her side.

Then the ‘something’ Scootaloo was waiting for happened. She felt something she had never felt before. The wind around her wings changed, she felt it stabilize and the slight upward tug became a mighty upward pull. At first it yanked her wings up from her side, but she was quick to pull them back into place. As soon as her wings were back in place she began pulling out of the dive. Within seconds she was shooting across the sky parallel to the ground.

“I’m flying,” she first whispered to herself, then she realized what she had just said and shouted, “I’m flying!”

“Gliding, now don’t move a muscle,” Rainbow Dash corrected, with a smile. Although her gaze never left the air speed gauge.

Gliding, flying, Scootaloo didn’t care about the difference right now. Because right now she wasn’t an intruder falling through the air anymore. For the first time in her life she was a part of the sky. For the first time, she belonged in the sky. “Yes ma'am!” she called out, finally acknowledging her mentor’s command.

Scootaloo had been gliding forward only a few seconds before she felt something in the air change. She was slowing down and with it the wind around her wings began to destabilize. The lift from her wings vanished as suddenly as it had come and she fell forward. “Rainbow Dash!” she cried, out in surprise.

“Relax I’m going to need you to stall a couple more times to figure out what I want to know,” Dash responded, in a calm voice.

Reassured that this was part of the plan, Scootaloo held her pose and trusted her mentor that everything would work out. As she fell she gained speed and the wind around her wings changed again. This time she was ready for it and stiffened her wings just before the lift returned. She pulled out of the dive much more smoothly then the first time.

Once more Rainbow Dash seemed focused on matching Scootaloo’s speed and watching the air speed gauge. Scootaloo didn’t mind though. She just rode through the dives and leveling out like a stair-stepped roller coaster. Until she dared to glance down and realized that they were rapidly running out of altitude. “Umm, Rainbow Dash, we’re…” she started.

“Running out of sky. Yeah I see can that too,” Rainbow Dash interrupted.

In an instant Dash had swooped below Scootaloo, pulling up and flaring hard she came up to collide with her student. As the two hit, Scootaloo wrapped her legs around Rainbow Dash’s body, and felt the lift from her own wings vanish once more as they continued to slow down.

Satisfied that the scary ordeal of having to be caught mid-flight, hundreds of feet off the ground, was over, Scootaloo folded her wings to her side and asked, “How’d I do coach?”

Rainbow Dash didn’t sound very enthusiastic when she gave the reply, “Seems your minimum glide speed is around two hundred and ten miles an hour.”

“Wow! Was I really going that fast?” Scootaloo said, her ears perking up with enthusiasm to spare at what she just heard. Her eyes darting around to the scenery and finding that even with only a few minutes of gliding they were several miles away from Rainbow Dash’s cloud house now.

“Yeah… The thing is, the point of glide practice is to get you minimum glide speed as low as possible,” Dash answered, hesitantly but honestly.

“Oh,” was all Scootaloo could say, as her enthusiasm deflated. Once she had gathered her thoughts a question accrued to her. “So, what’s yours?”

Tempted to give the filly the answer but not wanting to discourage her student any more, Rainbow Dash answered, “That’s not exactly a fair comparison you know. I am the greatest flyer ever after all. And besides young pegasi always have a higher glide speed than adults.”

“Then what should it be?” Scootaloo asked, persisting in wanting to find some way to gauge the numbers she had been given.

Dash sighed, not knowing how to say the truth in any other way then bluntly. “I think the average for fillies your age is around seventy or so.”

Scootaloo almost lost her hold on her mentor. Math was not among her strong points but even she realized that meant her minimum glide speed was triple what it should be.

Rainbow Dash felt her student’s dismay at this news but didn’t know what else to say, except to give the filly something to distract her mind by continuing the lesson. “So you’re a weak flyer, big deal we knew that going into this. What I need you to do now is watch the way I flap my wings on the way back okay?”

Nodding, Scootaloo fixed her gaze on her mentor’s wings. But remained silent the rest of the flight back to the field they had stared at.

Once Scootaloo’s hooves were safely back on solid ground she asked, “What now?”

“Now you show me you can flap your wings like that,” Rainbow Dash answered.

Opening her wings, Scootaloo tried to copy the way she had seen Dash flap her wings. Much to her dismay, she found she had to beat her wings slowly and deliberately to stop herself from slipping into her scooter mode of wing use.

Rainbow Dash watched her student’s attempt with her own wing out, to measure the airflow the filly’s wings were kicking up. “Twist your wings a little more forward. Back a bit. There perfect.” Dash told her student, looking the filly over and deciding that she was holding an acceptable wing beat pattern. “Okay that’s all I have time for today. But I want you to practice flapping your wings like that. I think I can fit you in wednesday after school. So keep yourself free, there’s someplace I want to show you.”

“Really? What is it?” Scootaloo said, perking up at the realization that Rainbow Dash was still offering to teach her to fly despite her poor performance today.

“If you want to know you’ll just have to come with me wednesday,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Aww…” Scootaloo said, flattening her ears in disappointment at the secrecy but still excited to be learning from her hero.

* * * * * * *

The week had crawled by at a snail’s pace for Scootaloo, but now that the appointed day was here she wished it had been longer still. For all the practice she had done she still couldn’t flap her wings quickly without slipping back into her scooter style and forgetting to fold her wings on the up stroke. Not that there was anything she could do about it stuck in her seat, in a one room schoolhouse, waiting for class to end. She was all out of practice time, soon class would end and Rainbow Dash would be waiting for her outside, and the butterflies in the filly’s stomach told her she still wasn’t ready.

The bell rang followed by Cheerilee’s dismissal and the usual rush of young ponies heading out the door. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle waited by Scootaloo’s side, “Is something wrong?” the white unicorn filly with the pink and purple mane asked.

“No, sorry Sweetie Belle, just distracted,” Scootaloo answered.

“Well go on, you don’t want to keep Rainbow Dash wait’n, now do ya?” the earth pony filly with the yellow coat and red mane asked, her ever present pink bow bouncing with her as she hopped to rush her friend toward the door.

“All right, I’m going, I’m going,” Scootaloo said, forcing a smile and trying to sound more happy than nervous.

Scootaloo’s friends wished her luck as they parted ways outside the schoolhouse. Now came the matter of finding her mentor. As it turned out Rainbow Dash wasn’t waiting right outside for her. Looking skyward she found not so much as a single cloud in the sky. Probably why Dash had chosen today for the lesson, she probably knew the weather schedule had called for clear skies today all along and that meant a quick round of cloud clearing in the morning and having the rest of the day to herself.

That thought didn’t help Scootaloo find her mentor though and the sudden realization that Rainbow Dash had never mentioned where they were going to meet today only made her more nervous. Where did her mentor expect her to go? She looked down at her saddlebags and thought. Of course Dash didn’t plan on picking her up at school, she would need time to ditch the extra weight. But where else would she be waiting? As far as Scootaloo knew her mentor didn’t even know where she lived, so that left the crusader’s clubhouse or Dash’s house.

Deciding on the latter Scootaloo pulled her scooter, with the blue baseboard and red wheels, up from its resting-place beside the schoolhouse and started to head home to drop off her saddlebags.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” a familiar voice called out from nearby.

Scootaloo didn’t answer, instead she took another look around, trying to find the source of her mentor’s voice. Quickly spotting a few strands of prismatic hair among the branches and a set of rose eyes peering through the leaves of a nearby tree she called out, “Rainbow Dash, you’re here!”

“Of course I’m here, I said I would be didn’t I?” Rainbow Dash answered back, as if it will be silly to think otherwise. Spotting the filly’s saddlebags Rainbow Dash noticed a small flaw in her plan. “So, where are we dropping off the extra weight?”

Scootaloo thought about it for a second, “The clubhouse is closest, wana race?”

“Oh you’re on!” Rainbow Dash answered, taking to the air and flying overhead as Scootaloo fired up her wings and powered her scooter forward at high speed.

The two raced along the streets of Ponyville, the brightly painted, though mostly some kind of cream color, wooden buildings marking the boundaries of their race. Dash flew low overhead dodging hanging signs, outstretched wooden beams, and occasionally brushing the amber waves of thatch roofs as she flew past. Below, Scootaloo wove her way through the colorful crowd of ponies, who were going about their ways on the streets of Ponyville, with relative ease and keeping pace with her airborne racing partner. They exited town heading down the dirt road to the seemingly endless field of apple trees known as sweet apple acres, trading lead several times. As the clubhouse came into sight Rainbow Dash blitzed ahead, landing on the balcony of the tree-house with enough time to land gently before Scootaloo set wheel on the ramp.

A quick moment of laughter between the two was all the time Scootaloo needed to roll her scooter inside the clubhouse and slide her saddlebags off her back. “Ready!” she announced, as she stepped back outside.

Rainbow Dash had already lowered herself to the floor, a nod of her head was all that was needed to get the filly to climb onto her back. A second later and they were leaving the apple farm far below. It only took a minute for Scootaloo to figure out where they were going, once Ponyville was behind them it was clear they were pointed right at the pride of pegasus cities, Cloudsdale.

“It will take some time to reach Cloudsdale, so you should use the time to memorize the way I flap my wings,” Rainbow Dash called back, to the filly on her back.

“Sure thing!” Scootaloo called back, over the winds.

With that, Scootaloo brought her eyes away from the rolling green hills, snowcapped mountains and fluffy clouds around her and focused on watching the light blue wings holding her aloft.

* * * * * * *

Once they had entered Cloudsdale, Scootaloo couldn’t help but take her eyes off her mentor’s wings. The towering cloud structures, with their stylized columns and designs that generally mimicked ancient stonework, shimmering in the sunlight, the fields of endless white cloud streets and the subtle blue hues the clouds had in the shade, the fountains of liquid rainbow, all captured her eyes. Back in Ponyville the only example of pegasus cloud buildings was Dash's cloud house, to be surrounded by an entire city made of clouds made Scootaloo's eyes light up like a foal's on hearth's warming morning. Only when she noticed the odd looks they were drawing from other pegasi, who noticed the filly riding on Rainbow Dash’s back, did Scootaloo look away from the grandeur of the cloud city around her.

As much as she tried to ignore the other pegasi around them Scootaloo couldn’t help looking at them to see if they were still looking at her with… what was that look in their eyes? Pity? Or was it curiosity? Whatever it was she saw it every time they spotted her wings. She knew that one way or another they were wondering why she wasn’t flying herself wherever she was going.

All of a sudden the looks from other pegasi stopped. Scootaloo looked around to find out why, but as far as she could tell this part of Cloudsdale was no different than the other streets they had flown down.

The answer came when the two landed and Dash announced, “This is it.”

Looking at the towering wall of cloud in front of her, Scootaloo's eyes found a doorway flanked by columns of crafted cloud. Above the doorway were the words ‘Cloudsdale Flight Practice Field.’ Yes, that had to be why the ponies near the field didn’t look at her oddly when they saw her riding another pegasus. In this part of town they probably knew that meant she was a weak flyer.

“What’s wrong?” Dash asked, seeing the filly less then excited to be at a proper training facility.

“Nothing, it’s just…” Scootaloo trailed off, trying not to sound ungrateful, “…when you said you wanted to show me someplace… I didn’t think you meant to take me somewhere that practically announces to the world that I’m the weakest flyer of all time.”

“Whoa, that’s not why we're here at all. Let's go inside, you’ll see why I brought you here,” Rainbow Dash said defensively.

After a moment of silence Scootaloo had to ask, “What are we waiting for?”

“For you to get off my back and walk through that door,” Dash answered.

Only then did Scootaloo realize that they weren’t flying anymore, and hadn’t been for some time. She looked down at the swirling water vapor at Rainbow Dash’s hooves. Scootaloo knew pegasi could walk on clouds, everypony did. But that didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t use to doing so herself.

Hesitantly she slid off her mentor’s back and let her hooves hit cloud. The clouds felt soft like standing on a pillow that had a lot of give. She took a timid step forward and paused, then another, then she heard Rainbow Dash giggling behind her.

“Sorry, I just realized you’ve never walked on clouds before. You look so funny acting like it’s thin ice or something,” she snickered, as she tried to hide the smile on her face.

“I have too walked on clouds before!” Scootaloo protested. The questioning look from her mentor prompting her to add, “Well kinda. I climbed up a fog bank, once.”

It took a moment for Rainbow Dash to suppress her giggling, but once recomposed she took the lead going up the steps to the practice field and prompted her student to follow. Scootaloo stood up straight and followed her mentor. As she ascended the steps she noticed that the cloud crafted steps were firmer than the unrefined cloud, and found that more comforting under her hooves than the street clouds.

Walking through the doorway Scootaloo found that she was mistaken to think the practice field was a building. True to its name the field was just that, the wall behind her was the only wall the facility had. Before her was a sort of balcony with no guardrail, instead the cloud floor had several lanes that ended in short clouds jutting out over the edge that reminded her of diving boards. And beyond them she could see an almost endless field of clouds. To either side of the field she could see rows of could-crafted homes from the neighborhoods on either side of the practice field, only the far end of the field was exposed to open sky.

The next thing that caught her attention was the ponies, lots of them. There must have been twenty or more filly and colts around, many getting ready to jump off one of the clouds. Some alone, others seemed to jump together. Some adult pegasi seemed to be watching intently while frequently flying out into the field and coming back with a young pegasus on their back.

A yellow blur of a foal fell past, screaming, as one would expect from an earth pony who fell off a cliff. The foal was followed immediately by a colt with a family resemblance, diving after his little sister. A second later Scootaloo heard a ‘foomp’ from the foal hitting the cloud field below. A few seconds after that the colt, about Scootaloo’s age, appeared again haling his little sister up by the mane.

Watching the two rise ever higher above Scootaloo notice the floor above them. It had the same designed as the one she was on, with several short ramps jutting out, marking the lanes. Having to guess, Scootaloo figured the second floor was a good hundred plus feet above the first.

Seeing her student watching the other young pegasi trying to fly Rainbow Dash leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “See? You’re not the only pegasus in the world that didn’t learn to fly by instinct alone.” Then in a normal voice thought aloud, “I’m going to go figure out how things work around… Oh now that’s cool. Check this out.”

Turning around to see what her mentor was talking about, Scootaloo found her looking at the posters along the wall behind them. Tracing her hero’s eyes, Scootaloo followed them past a wonderbolt poster to one that consisted of two pictures. The top picture was a prismatic shockwave exploding outward over the landscape, with a radian flare of white light at its center. The bottom picture was a rather awestruck image of her mentor standing on clouds with a small gold crown resting on her head. At the bottom of the poster was the text:

‘Rainbow Dash, winner of the best young flyers competition.
The only pegasus in living memory to perform the sonic rainboom.’

Scootaloo’s eyes went wide as she realized what she was looking at. She had seen that winged crown with a lightning bolt before when Rainbow Dash was showing it off after said competition. “Is this really from the competition?” she asked.

Looking the poster over a little more closely before she answered, “Top ones definitely the Rainboom I made that day… Hmm judging from the look on my face the bottom one must have been when they had just given me the winners crown… Yeah that was an awesome day,” Rainbow Dash said, smiling as her eyes lost focus. Then snapping back to the present added, “Hey! Why didn’t anypony tell me they made posters?”

Scootaloo noticed that the background chatter behind her was quickly turning to whispers. A quick glance revealed that many of the pegasi were now staring at the sky blue mare with the rainbow mane. “Um… Rainbow Dash, you seem to be drawing a lot of attention,” Scootaloo whispered to her mentor.

“Good. That’ll save me the trouble of finding somepony to tell me what we do to reserve a lane around here,” Rainbow Dash replied.

Sure enough, a few seconds latter an adult stallion with a gray coat and green mane approached them. “Well there’s one pony I never thought I’d see here. You’re Rainbow Dash right? Could I ask you a favor?”

“The one and only! What did you have in mind?” the aspiring stunt pony answered, with her usual show pony bravado.

“It’s not often that a famous flyer comes by here, so I was wondering if maybe you could take the time to put on a little show to inspire the little ones around here. You know just a few fancy moves, something to show them what a pegasus can really do if they work hard at their flying skills.”

Rainbow Dash was grinning ear to ear at the request. Knowing that Dash liked the attention, Scootaloo was beginning to worry that maybe her mentor would forget why they were here in the first place. A fear that immediately proved unfounded when she answered the stallion’s question, “Let us reserve the far right lane and you got a deal.”

“It’s all yours. You can put on the show anytime. Just try to keep your end of the deal before day’s end,” the stallion responded, taking note of the filly by the famous flyer’s side.

Soon Scootaloo found herself riding on Rainbow Dash’s back as they flew up to the higher levels. As they flew, the filly saw that there was a third floor much higher than either the first or second. Dash stopped at the second floor just long enough to bend the far right cloud ramp up into a makeshift wall and with her hoof scrawled the words ‘upper ramp in use’ on it before taking off again. The short stay only allowed Scootaloo time to notice that while fewer pegasi were using the second floor most of them were much younger than herself.

When they reached the third floor Scootaloo relaxed a little when she saw that it was empty except for herself and her mentor.

“Top floor everypony off,” Rainbow Dash announced, as she landed.

The observation was true enough. A quick glance confirmed that there were no more floors above them, not even a roof. Scootaloo then slid off her mentor’s back and stood up slowly. “Okay, so what now?”

“Before you go jumping off the launch cloud, Let’s see you flap those wings of yours,” Rainbow Dash said.

Scootaloo dug her hooves into the cloud to try and keep herself from moving, opened her wings, ran a mental check list through her mind, and began flapping her wings. She frowned as she tried to speed her wings up only to slip back into flapping them scooter style. She slowed them down and forced them to fold on the up-stroke again, but knew that she was beating her wings way too slowly to fly.

“Not bad,” her mentor commented. “Try putting more power in the down stroke. Remember the up-stroke is just to get your wings back to the top position of the cycle,” she added, opening her own wings and holding them high like she was about to take off.

Scootaloo obeyed and added ‘more power on down stroke’ to her mental list as she wished she could flap her wings like this without thinking about them. Just as she never had to think about her wings when riding her scooter.

“Twist your wings a little more forward… little more… good,” Rainbow Dash said. With one last look over her student, she nodded and gestured toward the cloud ramp. “Go for it, and don’t be afraid to tweak the way you’re holding your wings on the way down. I can tell you what I know, but in the end you’ll have to find the sweet spot that works for you yourself,” she added, flexing her wings a little forward and back to demonstrate different ways of holding her wings.

With a quick nod, Scootaloo walked up to the ramp, looked down, and froze. The cloud field below seemed awful far below, she knew that a pegasus had nothing to fear from falling onto a cloud but still her instincts told her to back away from the edge. “H-How high are we?” she asked.

Rainbow Dash looked at the wall behind them and pointed. Turned out the square-like spiral pattern along the top wasn't the only thing inscribed in the cloud wall, and Dash was pointing at large letters that formed the words ‘500 foot launch ramps.’

“Five hundred feet,” Scootaloo moaned under her breath. Then aloud added, “right, no problem. More power on down, fold on up, I can do this.”

Emboldened by the presence of her hero, Scootaloo gathered her courage, walked out onto the launch ramp, opened her wings and jumped as hard as she could into open space. She then fell like a rock. After a moment of twisting she got herself pointed straight down. A few seconds of free fall later and she remember to flap her wings. Panicking a little as she fell, she tried to speed up her wings and slipped into her scooter style of flapping her wings. She shot passed the second floor by the time she realized her error and started folding her wings on the up-stroke again. For a moment she thought she felt herself pulling out of the dive as she rushed past the first floor launch ramps.

Slammed into the cloud field below, she found the impact oddly soft. The clouds had all the give in the world yet at the same time resisted her forward movement like rubber or maybe an air bag. Once her momentum was gone the infinite softness of raw clouds returned as she lay motionless.

Even with her front half buried in the cloud she could hear the teasing and laughter of the other pegasus fillies and colts above her. Scootaloo wished she could just dig the rest of the way into the cloud and hide altogether. Being a pegasus she realized that she probably could. But she also realized that she didn’t know how thick the cloud was and the last thing she wanted to do was to accidentally dig all the way through.

The sound of laughter above had suddenly cut in half. Curiosity drove Scootaloo to pull herself free of the cloud. Shaking off the bits of cloud stuck in her mane she heard most of the rest of the laughing die out. Looking up it wasn’t hard to see why. Rainbow Dash was gliding slowly down toward her, and any pony that hadn’t noticed the pony from the poster before was noticing her now. Some of the young ponies were even doing double takes, looking back and forth between the pegasus before them and the poster wall behind.

“Wow that was awesome! I haven’t seen somepony crater like that since… summer flight camp…” Dash said, her cheerful tone trailing off as she mentioned the camp. Then her ears flattened and eyes narrowed in annoyance as she added, “…Dang Fluttershy was right.”

“Fluttershy was talking about me?” Scootaloo asked.

“What? No, it’s nothing like that, just that I realized her memories of a certain event were better then mine,” Rainbow Dash responded, glancing at the diving platforms above them for a moment.

“Heh, I see why you called it a crater,” Scootaloo said, blushing once she had climbed out of the hole her cash landing made.

“Yeah and a fairly impressive one too,” Rainbow Dash said, as she started filling in the crater.

With the field repaired, Scootaloo found herself once more being lifted back up to the top floor. She tried not to look at the other pegasi as they passed the first two floors. However, she did manage to find the signs that stated the first floor was at one hundred feet above the cloud field. And the second was two hundred and fifty feet.

“What’s wrong? You’re not going to let some foals poking a little fun at you stop you? Right?” Rainbow Dash asked, after waiting several seconds for her to jump a second time.

“What? No… Turkey, chicken, penguin, dodo, I heard it all before. I’m use it. I’m sure I’ve been called every flightless bird in the book by now. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to wait for them to stop laughing at me before I give them another reason to make fun of me,” Scootaloo said, with her eyes fixed on a colt on the second floor, easily half her age, who had just pointed up at her and was now flinching and laughing like he was under tickle attack.

“Is that all? Get ready to jump this won’t take long,” Rainbow Dash said, doing a back flip into a spiral dive.

In seconds she was living up to her promise to put on a show for all to see. Even Scootaloo felt inspired watching her mentor pulling impossibly tight high speed turns, loop-de-loops, flips and spins. More to the point, all the young ponies had clearly forgotten about Scootaloo’s embarrassing little crash-landing.

As soon as Rainbow Dash was at her side once more, a look and a nod from her mentor was all she need to jump again.

* * * * * * *

By the time her first real day at the flight training field has ended Scootaloo still wasn’t flying. She was, however, getting rather good at smoothing the clouds back out after her attempts. Once more on her mentor’s back, the filly looked out at Cloudsdale as they left it behind them and sighed. She had hoped she would do better then that, but for all the things she tried, the best she had done was to get one hundred feet down range before cratering into the cloud field.

Scootaloo’s eyes fell on the rolling hills north of Ponyville. Several things among the green hills caught her interest, but three of them especially interested her. Judging from gray color and layout, two of them looked like old ruins, and the third was a single metal building all alone, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

She didn’t know anything like that was in the hills north of town before. What interested her about these three things was that they seemed close enough to Ponyville that she and her friends could make it to them and back in under a day. Cutie mark crusader explorers. Scootaloo thought to herself with a smile. She may not have learned to fly but at least this trip hadn’t been a total waste.

“Hey Scoots, I’ve been thinking,” Rainbow Dash spoke up, for the first time since they’d left Cloudsdale. “How come your parents never taught you to fly?”

Scootaloo cringed at the question but a part of her knew it was inevitable. “Well dad works really hard, so even when he is home he always just wants to rest,” she responded in a low voice, and fixing her gaze at the base of Dash’s neck.

Rainbow Dash could tell from the lonely tone in her voice that this wasn’t a topic Scootaloo liked talking about, so she waited for a follow up but it never came. Not sure she wanted to risk it Rainbow Dash asked anyway, “What about your mom?”

Oddly enough Scootaloo didn’t hesitate at all to answer the question. “Oh she’s a secretary to a diplomat,” Scootaloo words were very matter-of-fact, as if she was answering a question at school on a topic she had no interest in.

“That doesn’t sound too hard. How come she didn’t teach you?” Rainbow Dash asked, before thinking anything through.

“I said ‘diplomat’, didn’t I? She’s almost never in Equestria and forget Ponyville,” Scootaloo shrugged off the question with emotionless ease.

“I get the feeling that you don’t like your mom,” Rainbow Dash mentioned, slightly troubled by the detached way her student answered the question.

“I don’t hate her. I just don’t know her,” Scootaloo said in her defense. Pondering for a moment she added, “I mean, I know why it has to be this way. And that I shouldn’t hate her for never being there for me. And dad always tells me that she loves me. But the only way I’ve found to stop myself from hating her is to think of her as just another stranger.”

Simply nodding, Rainbow Dash let the topic die. She had heard enough. Scootaloo’s father was too busy and her mother was absent from her life. It was no wonder nopony had taught her to fly yet.

Chapter 2: To Learn

The trip to the Cloudsdale practice field had become a weekly tradition between Scootaloo and her mentor. With each passing week she had been slowly getting better at flying. Not that what she could do could be call flying. By far, her favorite part of the trips was when Rainbow Dash would try to teach her new things despite not having gotten basic flight down. Like teaching her how to flare her wings and drop her legs just before she hit cloud to land properly, and more importantly stop digging trenches in the cloud field for them to fill in every flight attempt.

Sometimes Rainbow Dash would even take the lesson into open sky to take another shot at glide practice. While Scootaloo’s minimum glide speed was coming down, it was still oddly high. Today, however, she didn’t have to worry about her glide speed. Today they were back at the practice field, so all the filly had to worry about was pulling out of a dive before slamming into the fluffy, white field of clouds.

Scootaloo had lost count of how many tries she had made today. Maybe it was frustration. Maybe it was just plain recklessness. Whatever the case, she decided to try something wildly different this attempt. Backing up as far as she could and even pressing herself against the cloud wall opposite the launch ramps. Digging her hooves into the cloud she brought her wings to life scooter style, drawing a raised eyebrow from her mentor. Once her wings were up to speed Scootaloo broke into a sprint, charging the launch ramp with speed that could give a cheetah a run for their money, then she leapt into the sky.

Once airborne she mentally commanded her wings to change to a flying form. With that command, she switched over to the wing beat pattern Rainbow Dash had taught her. She could feel the force of her wings fighting gravity and she could feel that she wasn’t truly falling anymore. But she also felt what was missing, the wind around her wings wasn’t stable. She was falling slowly, not flying.

Not satisfied with another attempt doomed to crater a hundred feet down range, Scootaloo pointed herself down into a dive. Her speed picked up and the wind around her wings stabilized. Wanting more speed she forced herself to stay in the dive.

Blitzing past the second floor, Scootaloo used that as her signal to pull up. Pulling out of the dive she flapped her wings as fast as she could. Next thing she knew, she was shooting down range like an arrow, even making it halfway down the field before she noticed she had slipped back into buzzing her wings scooter style. Correcting the error she found herself losing altitude at a slower rate.

Soon, out of the corner of her eye, Scootaloo caught sight of the cloud pylon marking the three-fourths point of the field. The safety wall at the far side of the field was her goal, and it looked like she still had the altitude to reach it.

Scootaloo felt herself losing momentum and the wind around her wings destabilizing. No. I’m not going to fall short again. Not this time. She encouraged herself. Knowing only one trick to get speed back, she pointed herself into a dive. The wind around her wings stabilized once more, and she only pulled out into a shallow dive to maintain the speed.

As she neared her target, she saw that she was aimed at the base of the safety wall and thought to herself. Why stop here? The wall isn’t that high. She pulled up hard and arched over the top of the cloud wall. The act cost her speed and the wind around her wings destabilized, and she fell. The stall may have forced Scootaloo into a dive but she had done it. The wall was behind her. She had cleared the practice field… and now she was falling through open sky.

It didn’t take more then a few seconds to get enough speed to pull up into a shallow dive again. But now Scootaloo had a new problem. She could only fly under her own power as well as a hang glider. And that meant she had no way to get back up to the practice field.

Her eyes darted around desperately, she could feel her heart beating like mad as she searched for anything useful. From her last glide test, Scootaloo knew that if she was flapping her wings she could bring her minimum flight speed down to about a hundred miles an hour. Not in her wildest dreams could she get her scooter going that fast, so there was no way she could land on the ground at those speeds. Clouds, she needed clouds to land on. Her eyes went wide in panic as she looked around and saw none below her.

A shadow passed over Scootaloo. Looking up she saw the prismatic wake of her mentor shooting down toward her and she calmed, knowing her mentor would soon lift her back skyward. Only Rainbow Dash didn’t lift her out of her shallow dive. Instead she looked at Scootaloo and then measured the angle of her decent. “Hey Scoots! Point yourself to Ponyville!” Dash shouted, pointing to the south.

“Wha-huh?” Scootaloo cried, but did as commanded. “There’s no way I can make it all the way to Ponyville on my own!” she protested, once she realized where this idea was going.

Rainbow Dash smiled the kind of smile that meant she had a plan. “I know. I’ll be right back. I’m going to sign us out of the practice field so they don’t get worried and come looking for us,” she called back to her student. Dash didn’t give Scootaloo a second chance to protest and darted back up to the cloud field above them.

Scootaloo couldn’t help but frequently checking back over her shoulder to see if her mentor was coming back yet. The half-minute she spent out of sight felt like an hour to the filly, but eventually she looked back and spotted a prismatic motion blur headed her way again.

Rainbow Dash pulled up along side Scootaloo and stayed there. “You’re not going to catch me are you?” the filly asked.

“Not if I can help it. But I will teach you the rules of gliding,” Rainbow Dash responded, with a bit of a confident smirk.

Scootaloo’s eyes went back and forth between herself and her mentor. She was flapping her wings trying to fly, but she was getting the same result Dash was getting just gliding. “But! Rainbow Dash, even like this I can’t make it back to Ponyville!” Scootaloo protested.

“Sure you can. Just follow me and I’ll show you how to ride thermals.”

Thermals? The only time Scootaloo had heard that word used was when Sweetie Belle’s older sister Rarity was designing winter clothes. How that had anything to do with flying was beyond her. She watched her mentor scanning the ground below and even looking to some of the clouds above. Then Rainbow Dash made a gentle turn to the west, motioning for Scootaloo to follow. The filly did so and soon felt a rush of warm air slam into her from below, forcing her skyward.

Looking ahead Scootaloo saw her mentor in a shallow turn, so she turned to match. As she did, she felt the air settle and chill. Rainbow Dash led the way around back through the pillar of rising air. The two of them did a few more passes through the powerful upward rush of air, pushing them skyward, before Rainbow Dash pointed them back at Ponyville.

“What was that?” Scootaloo couldn’t help but ask, as she looked down and saw how much higher they were now then when they had first found the upward air current.

“That’s a thermal, a column of rising hot air. I don’t remember the details, but I recall something about the way the sun heats the ground differently in different places or something,” her mentor answered.

Smiling, Scootaloo realized that this was how she was going to make it to Ponyville.

* * * * * * *

Rainbow Dash had been leading Scootaloo from one thermal to the next on a path to Ponyville. They were only halfway there when the filly found a new problem. “Rainbow Dash! Can we stop and rest somewhere?” she called out to her mentor.

Rainbow Dash looked at her student as if that was the dumbest question ever for a moment. Then after looking between her own gliding wings and the filly’s flapping ones, she slapped herself in the face with her own hoof. “Right, the trick to long distance flying is to alternate between flying and gliding. Just rest your wings by gliding for a while.”

“But Rainbow Dash I lose altitude faster when I’m actually gliding!” Scootaloo complained, fearing she wouldn’t be able to make it form one thermal to the next.

“Let me worry about that!” Rainbow Dash called back.

Scootaloo hesitated for a minute, but as long as she had been mentored by Rainbow Dash her hero had always come through for her. So she fixed her wings in a glide form and pointed herself down until she had enough speed to truly glide. Scootaloo found it wasn’t truly restful, but it was like the difference between standing and running. Her wings were still supporting her weight, but at least they didn’t have to work hard at it.

With her increased speed Scootaloo found that reaching the next thermal wasn’t a problem. It did, however, take significantly more passes through them to reach the top of any given thermal since she was spending less time in the updraft and more looping around to get back in it.

* * * * * * *

A few thermals latter Rainbow Dash pointed down and smiled, “Told ya I could get you here.”

Scootaloo had been fixated on matching her mentor’s path so long that she hadn’t bothered to look at the ground recently. As she did so, she saw Ponyville ahead and close enough that she knew she didn’t need to ride any more thermals to reach it riding her own wings. “Great! We’re here, so can you catch me now?” Scootaloo half asked, half pleaded. Her wings aching, wanting true rest.

“Why? You’ve been landing just fine at the practice field?” Dash asked.

“On clouds! This is way too fast to hit ground with my hooves!” Scootaloo shouted, in near panic at the idea of landing on the ground this fast.

Rainbow Dash looked at her student and the ground to gauge their speed. A smile formed on her face. “How about with wheels?”

Looking down Scootaloo thought about the question. Maybe when she was going full throttle downhill she could get her scooter to somewhere around seventy or so, that wasn’t too far off from her current speed, was it? The wind rushing through her mane reminder her she lacked her helmet. With as many helmets as she had to replace just riding normally, she didn’t like the idea of testing her scooter riding skills without one. Then she saw the expecting eyes of her mentor and she swallowed. “Heh, sure, no problem,” she finally answered, nervously.

“Scooter’s at the clubhouse right?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Just inside the door to the right.”

With that, Rainbow Dash took off like a rocket, leaving a prismatic trail all the way to sweet apple acres. When she came blitzing back she had the scooter hanging from her front legs, shouting a warning to the residents below. Dash did a quick half loop to turn around and lined herself up ahead and slightly above Scootaloo. “Say when and I’ll drop it!” Rainbow Dash called out.

Scootaloo swallowed, she had half expected her mentor to admit it was a joke and catch her when she returned with the scooter. But this was real. Dash really expected her to go through with landing herself scooter style.

Looking down the street, she found that most of the ponies that had been minding their own business were now ducking for cover in alleyways or just against the nearest building, leaving the street mostly free. Turned out when Rainbow Dash gave a warning ponies listened.

A glance to the side Scootaloo saw that she was below rooftop level. It was now or never. “Now!” she practically screamed.

Rainbow Dash dropped the scooter. Scootaloo stopped trying to fly and hooked it with her front legs, while bringing her hind legs down on the baseboard. Firmly in possession of her scooter, she flared her wings as hard as she could to kill as much speed as possible before touching ground.

When the scooter’s wheels touched down they bounced, resisting the demand that they go from a stand still to spinning at high speed. That made Scootaloo tilt forward. She was already trying to air brake at this point, so angling some of the thrust to counter the unwanted spin was easy enough. When she came down again the scooter’s wheels already spinning, so they didn’t try to flip her as bad as the first bounce. After the third bounce she stayed on the ground and now it was just a matter of keeping the speed wobbles in check while she slowed down. She came screeching to a halt still more or less in the middle of the street that had served as her makeshift runway. Unable to move, Scootaloo just stood there, as her mind tried to figure out what had just happened.

“And you didn’t think you could make it all the way back,” Rainbow Dash said, landing beside her student with a smile that practically beamed confidence incarnate.

Turning to look over her shoulder, Scootaloo's movements were slow. Still partly stunned as her eyes fell on Cloudsdale distantly behind her. Her mentor was right. The weight of what really happened this day made her sit down on her scooter. She had just flown all the way from Cloudsdale on her own wings. She may have flown like a glider, but she had still flown a serious distance, and it was her wings that had carried her all that way.

Chapter 3: When to Persevere

How many weeks had it been since Scootaloo had first set hoof in the Cloudsdale practice field? Truth was she had lost track. They had been at it so long that interruptions to the weekly tradition had become unavoidable. In fact, many times they hadn’t even bothered to come to the practice field for the week’s lesson, favoring open-air lessons, using Rainbow Dash’s house as the crash landing pad.

Today was an unusual one. Rainbow Dash had told her that she had other business in Couldsdale and wanted to know if she wanted to tag along, even if it meant just being dropped off at the practice field. Right now Scootaloo was regretting having said ‘yes’. How did she think that today she would be any better then the last time she was here? Her progress had been so slow and steady that she was almost sure she was more waiting for her body to grow than learn anything. Her ears deflated at the depressing thought.

So now Scootaloo sat waiting on her usual launch ramp. At least it was her new ‘usual launch ramp’. Now that reaching the far side of the practice field from the five hundred foot ramp was easy, she had moved down to the two hundred and fifty foot launch ramps. Still, using the far right lane at least kept her out of mind of most of the other young pegasi.

But that was just one of the problems. Usually she had the third floor to herself. Maybe once in a while a class would come up for a gliding or stall recovery lesson, but for the most part she had been able to practice away from the other fillies and colts. Not so here on the second floor launch ramps. Ponies came and went all day long and Scootaloo had yet to be the only one using this floor. Forced into the presence of the other ‘weak flyers’, she had no choice but to observe that she was always the oldest pegasus here. Oldest trying to learn anyway. Sometimes she would see a filly or colt her age around but they were always helping a younger sibling learn to fly. Additionally, Scootaloo had noticed that she rarely saw the same young learners for more then three weeks in a row before they never seemed to come back.

Scootaloo’s eyes drifted down to one more thing that set her apart from the other young pegasi. The blue band on her front leg. After she had cleared the safety wall, the next time she came back, the practice field employees had made her pick out a colored leg-band. At first she was happy to have a small trophy of her accomplishment. But eventually she learned that the band was to mark her as ‘dangerous’ in that she could clear the safety wall but still couldn’t truly fly. As a result, now she wasn’t allowed to jump from the launch ramps without an adult watching her. Normally that wasn’t a problem, but with Rainbow Dash elsewhere in Cloudsdale today that meant Scootaloo had to wait for one of the field employees to watch her.

So she sat there, waiting, thinking. Inevitably the frustrations of being unable to fly came in to her mind, and it made her give a cynical laugh. It was funny, Scootaloo wasn’t sure who was more frustrated that she couldn’t fly, herself or her mentor. Either way the filly wasn’t too happy with her slow but steady progress. Part of her was driven to live up to her mentor’s example. Part of her wanted to give up so she could stop embarrassing herself in front of her idol. Ultimately the part of her that knew giving up would disappoint her mentor the most won out, so here she sat, waiting to try again.

A stallion with a white coat and gray mane came over and took note of her leg-band. The cap on his head marking him as a practice field employee. “Ready?” was all he asked.

Nodding, Scootaloo backed up, giving herself as much room as possible. Her wings came to life and she took off running at the ramp. Instead of jumping, she intentionally hooked the end of the launch ramp, pulling herself downward, and kicking upward with her hind legs as she fell past the ramp. Launched into an immediate high-speed dive, Scootaloo was beating her wings scooter style as hard as she could. She wanted as much speed as she could gather, as quickly as possible.

Feeling the winds around her wings stabilize she kept diving, until she shot past the first floor like a rocket, then she commanded her wings to fly. With her inward command she instantly swapped over to a proper wing form.

Pulling out of her dive with a good fifty feet between herself and the cloud field below. Flapping her wings furiously, Scootaloo shot down range with extraordinary speed, and had cleared the halfway marker pylon by the time she felt herself losing speed.

Pointing herself into a shallow dive, she shot past the three fourths marker pylon. First she was running out of altitude between herself and the field, so she leveled out and pushed her wings even harder. Then she was running low on speed and knew if she lost much more of it she would stall. She made another quick dive to only ten feet above the cloud field.

The safety wall wasn’t far now. The winds around her wings destabilized. Scootaloo made one last attempt to get some speed back, but it only bought her a second more air time. Gravity overcame the lift on her wings and she fell. Scootaloo didn’t try to land. She stayed in her flight form and let herself dig a small trench in the clouds sliding, tumbling and rolling. Sliding into the safety wall would be good enough in her mind. She could accept that as a win.

Having run out of momentum, Scootaloo lifted her face up from the cloud field. Only a few feet separated her from the safety wall. She had fallen short. She raised her hooves into the air in frustration at failing to reach even her petty goal of the moment. “Dang it!” she shouted, slamming her hoof down hard on the cloud below her. Her body froze in surprise as the patch of cloud below her lit up like a floodlight and a thunderous boom assaulted her ears.

Looking down, Scootaloo saw the patch of cloud she was standing on had turned into dark storm cloud. Gingerly, she tiptoed off the dangerous patch of cloud and looked over her shoulder. Her frustration vanished in an instant, as she felt her cheeks burning with embarrassment. “Opps, that was me, wasn’t it?” she whispered to the wind, hardly able to hear herself through the ringing in her ears.

When she had looked over her shoulder, she saw all activity at the launch ramps had come to a stop. All eyes were on her. Even the ones from the balconies of the homes that lined either side of the practice field were all locked on the orange filly and her patch of darkened cloud at the end of the field.

A moment latter, the stallion who had watched her jump came gliding down. “I know it must be frustrating to still be at it so long, and having so little to show for it. But please refrain from kicking lightning out of the clouds. The field is in a neighborhood,” he said, landing on the patch of storm cloud. Three blasts of lightning later and the cloud had turned back to its normal white. “Wow, you really charged that cloud up didn’t you?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Scootaloo apologized, head and ears held low.

“Just don’t do it again or we’ll both be in trouble,” the stallion said, with a bit of a laugh. “That’s that, let's head back,” he added, lowing himself to the clouds, offering a ride back to the launch ramps.

Scootaloo climbed on and soon they were heading back. The stallion stopped not far from where they had started to add a colt, who had been practicing gliding, to his passenger list.

The colt who joined Scootaloo on the ride back was easily a year or two younger than her and had blue fur and a light blue mane and tail, only his green eyes kept him from being blue head to hoof. “Thanks a lot. Now my ears won’t stop ringing,” he growled at Scootaloo.

“Hey, if you think you had it bad, think how loud it was to me!” Scootaloo protested, her ears still ringing just as bad as before.

“You caused it,” the colt said, with a cold, unsympathetic voice.

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident!” Scootaloo said, in her defense.

Scootaloo felt the colt’s head bang on her back. “You mean to tell me that you kicked lightning by mistake? I’ve been trying to learn how to do that for months! And now you’re telling me that even a flightless blank flank like you can figure it out?” he whimpered, adding in a lower voice, “...I must be so pathetic.”

“Hey, don’t say that kid. Most pegasi your age can’t kick lightning. Heck, some pegasi who never train in weather management never learn how,” the stallion they were riding spoke up.

Scootaloo went silent, as her mind started processing what she just heard. Her eyes fell on her flank, the absence of a cutie mark proving she had yet to find her special talent, her place in life. She didn’t mean to, but on instinct she tilted her head enough to see the colt’s cutie mark. It was a wispy cloud that seemed to symbolize wind more than clouds.

Was it really hard to kick lightning? She hadn’t even thought about it before. Probably because Rainbow Dash had made everything weather control look so natural that Scootaloo had just assumed that any pegasus could do it on a whim. What if handling lightning was her talent? Pondering that for a moment she sighed and dismissed the thought. Even Rarity’s talent for gemstone embroidery came with the talent to find the gems. What would be the point in being talented in an aspect of weather control if she couldn’t fly up to the clouds to use that talent?

“I know where she’s going, but where am I dropping you off, kid?” the stallion asked the colt on his back, as they neared the launch ramps.

“I can get back up there myself. Thanks for the ride,” the colt said, releasing his hold and flapping his wings, he took off, climbing toward the five hundred foot cloud ramps.

The stallion landed by the very ramp Scootaloo had taken off from. He looked down the row of launch ramps and satisfied that nothing needed his immediate attention he said, “Want to go again?”

‘Flightless blank flank’ the colt’s words echoed in Scootaloo’s mind and stabbed at her heart, draining her desire to continue practicing. Closing her eyes, to hide the tears forming in them, she shook her head. The stallion nodded and looking down range, spotted some young pegasi walking back towards the launch ramps. He took off to offer them a ride back.

Curling up by the wall behind her lane, Scootaloo pondered what to do. Looking at the shadows coming off the clouds around her, she saw that It was still the heat of the day. She knew that it would only take three good thermals for her to get back to Ponyville. As tempting as the thought of going home on her own was, two things stopped her. One, she wasn’t sure if Rainbow Dash would be proud of her for flying home on her own or mad at her that she risked trying to fly home alone. And second, she knew if she failed to find the thermals needed, she’d be in for one heck of a long hike back to Ponyville and she was certain Dash would be mad at her if she had to search for her in the hills between Cloudsdale and Ponyville. Deciding she had no choice, Scootaloo waited for her mentor to finish her business around town and come to pick her up.

Scootaloo’s mind began to wander, but it always came back to the same question. Why was she doing this to herself? Flight lessons had stopped being fun after the first few weeks and yet she had continued to frustrate herself all day one day a week, week after week. She just wished she could give up, go home and enjoy a good fun ride through town on her scooter.

Scootaloo’s pondering was interrupted when she saw her mentor rise up by her ramp and spot her curled up in the corner. “Nap time huh? Tempting but let’s go. We’re done here,” Rainbow Dash said, practically beaming.

Raising an eyebrow, Scootaloo found two things wrong with this turn of events. In all her trips her mentor had never once ordered her to call it a day early. And then there was the oddly enthusiastic smile on Rainbow Dash’s face. What was she so happy about that couldn’t wait? Odd as Scootaloo found it she had wanted to go anyway, so she was more than happy to jump to her hooves and make a quick dive off the ramp to the first floor. There she found the shelf by the front door and dropped her leg band in the small box with the others like it. Then she went over to a small wall with a bunch of names scrawled on it, and with a quick wipe of her foreleg removed her name from the cloud wall.

Once out on the streets of Cloudsdale, Scootaloo looked up at the towering cloud buildings and felt a wave of depression wash over her. She had once been proud to tell her friends she had been to the pride of pegasus cities. But now, all she felt was out of place here.

“Ready to go scoot?” Rainbow Dash asked, still in a cheerful tone.

“Can we fly?” Scootaloo asked, the pleading look in her eyes making the true meaning of her request clear.

“Sure we can, I wasn’t in the mood for a slow glide anyway. Besides I think I finally figured out what you’re doing wrong.”

“Really?” Scootaloo said, as she leapt into the air. Her wings coming to life.

A nod was all the answer Rainbow Dash gave as she too leapt into the air, catching and balancing her student on one hoof.

Scootaloo felt her mentor’s hoof digging slightly into her belly and pressing on her ribs, helping push her faster through the air. It wasn’t true flight but it was close enough to enjoy it. With that little boost she didn’t have to give up speed or altitude to stay airborne. When she turned, her mentor followed her lead. If she climbed, so did Rainbow Dash and the two of them raced through the streets of Cloudsdale until they emerged into the freedom of open sky. From there they headed back towards Pnoyville.

Scootaloo had been leading them more or less toward Pnoyville, weaving their way through the scattered clouds. It was no scooter ride, but it felt liberating all the same, it lifted her spirits to be soaring through the sky. Even if she still needed that little bit of extra help to do it.

They had been flying for almost five minutes by the time Scootaloo noticed that her mentor had been silent the whole time. “Well? Aren’t you going to tell me?” she asked, as she brought her hind leg down to tap her mentor’s leg.

“Heh. Was wondering how long you were going to wait to ask,” Rainbow Dash said. “It may have taken me a while to figure it out. But I can defiantly say you picked the right mentor. I’m probably the only pegasus in the world that would have thought of it.”

“Well what is it already?” Scootaloo asked, anxious to know what she was overlooking.

“To put it simply. Magic.”

“Umm. Rainbow Dash we’re pegasi, not unicorns. We don’t use magic,” Scootaloo stated the obvious.

“This coming from the pony that just kicked lightning out of a cloud,” came her mentor’s retort.

Scootaloo was instantly frozen in bewilderment. So simple a revelation, so obvious and yet she had never heard anypony liken a pegasus’ ‘abilities’ to magic before. Then a red flag went up in her mind. “Wait, you knew that was me?” she asked.

“I may have made an off the hoof comment about somepony throwing a tantrum when I first got back to the practice field. And one of the field guys may have mentioned something about it being you that was responsible for the thunder in the middle of a quiet neighborhood,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Sorry,” Scootaloo apologized reflexively. Being a cutie mark crusader had only increased the frequency she had to do that for one reason or another.

“Sorry? For what? Do you know how awesome it is that you can do that already?” The lack of response was enough to prompt Rainbow Dash to continue, “Let me put it to you this way. Any pegasus can kick lightning out of a storm cloud. A trained weather pony can kick lightning out of any cloud. But you have to be really good at handling lightning to charge a cloud up like that.”

“Really?” Scootaloo asked, not sure if her mentor was telling the truth or just trying to cheer her up.

“Yeah, really,” Rainbow Dash said, with a smile that meant it. “Now back to the point. The thing is pegasus magic does more then just let us walk on clouds and control the weather. Some of it helps us fly.”

“So you think that’s what I’m messing up?”

“I think so. I mean let’s be honest here. When we first started, you’re flight form was terrible. But now there’s nothing wrong with your form or wing beat pattern. In fact you have a more professional flight form than most pegasi I know.”

“Really?”

A nod accompanied the answered to Scootaloo’s question as her mentor continued with her point, “Yeah. But that’s just it. As far as I can tell you should be flying rings around most pegasi. So if there’s nothing wrong with your technique anymore, what’s left but magic?”

“So you think my magic is broken?”

“I don’t think it’s broken, I’m thinking that somehow you’re redirecting the magic that’s suppose to help you fly to one of your other passive magics.” Rainbow Dash hadn’t really thought this far ahead, so she was mentally scrabbling for something that sounded hopeful, so she added, “Maybe you’re sending your flight magic to your pegasus shield by mistake?”

“Pegasus shield?” Scootaloo asked, having never heard the term before.

“The passive magics that protect us from high speed flight. Sorry, I’m making up names as I go. Most pegasi doesn’t even think about our magics so it's not like they have formal names or anything.”

“Okay… how do we find out for sure?” Scootaloo asked, sensing her mentor’s uncertainty.

“I have an idea, but to try it I need you to promise me to keep everything I’m about to tell you super secret,” Rainbow Dash called back, with a sudden seriousness in her tone.

“Of course I’ll keep your secrets!”

“I’m talking super-duper-take-to-your-grave kinda secret here, Scoots. You sure you can do that?”

Pausing to take in her mentor’s words, Scootaloo already knew her answer but it was clear she needed to sound as serious as Rainbow Dash when she answered. Putting on her best brave face, the filly looked her mentor in the eyes when she confirmed she could keep a secret.

“The key to the sonic rainboom is to force your pegasus shield into a cone, so it can punch through the air resistance you get when approaching the sound barrier. I didn’t realize I did it the first time but eventually I realized that it was the first form of passive pegasus magic I learned to actively control.”

Scootaloo couldn’t believe the magnitude of what she had just heard. She had just been trusted with the secret to the most legendary of pegasus stunts. A flick of her mentor’s wrist snapped her out of her awe as she felt her support disappear. A Second latter Rainbow Dash’s front hooves collided with Scootaloo’s back hooves and the shear force of Dash’s wings pushed the both of them forward at incredible speed.

They zoomed forward, leaving Scootaloo’s minimum glide speed in the dust. As the speed built up, the force of the wind in Scootaloo’s face increased and soon she felt the air pressure on her front hooves too. A Thin layer of white appeared an inch in front of her hooves.

“See the sparks of lightning?!” Rainbow Dash shouted to her student. Scootaloo examined the thin layer of water vapor and shouted back when she saw small flashes of electricity. “That’s your pegasus shield! Force it into a cone!” Rainbow Dash yelled, barely audible over the roar of the wind.

“How?!” Scootaloo called back.

“I don’t know! It’s not like controlling your body or even thinking. Our magic doesn’t come from the body or mind, it’s more like it comes from the heart. You have to command it with shear force of will! Like when you make yourself be brave even when you’re scared! Or stop yourself from crying even when you’re still sad!” Rainbow Dash shouted the lesson over the winds, making it up as she went.

Not body, not thinking, more like controlling emotion. It wasn’t much to go on but it was all Scootaloo had. Glaring at the lightning crackling in the wall of compressed air, she thought anyway, You heard her shield, I need a cone not a sphere. Try as she might to keep her body out of it, she was also tensing and relaxing the mussels in her forehead and forelegs as she tried to focus her mind and feelings.

Scootaloo felt something change in the core of her being and the wall of compressed air around her close in for a second. Grabbing onto the feeling, she tried to force it to repeat itself. Her shield fluctuated a few times but refused to take the form of a cone. Trying to tweak the feeling one way and another, Scootaloo tried to get her shield to take the requested form. But despite her best efforts she couldn’t get it to do anything other than collapse into a half-oval shape.

She felt the compression taking a toll on her body. The wall of air pushing her back and her mentor pushing her forward. They had been at it too long and it was becoming too much. She knew her legs were on the verge of buckling under the strain.

“I can’t do it!” Scootaloo cried. In an instant the pressure on her evaporated along with the wall of compressed air in front of her. A quick glance back confirmed that Rainbow Dash wasn’t flapping her wings anymore. “I’m sorry, all I could get was an oval,” she added to her mentor, unable to look her in the eyes.

“The fact that you got anything at all is promising. It took me years to figure out how to control my shield. Of course I didn’t have anypony to help me. But more importantly, I could feel the strength of your shield and let me tell you it’s way too strong for a pony your age. I just know we’re on to something here,” Rainbow Dash called back, over the lessening winds. “Now that I think about it, we may be treading new ground, but I’m sure if we practice other forms of pegasus magic it will only be a matter of time before you figure out how to focus your energy back into you flight magic.”

“You really think so?” Scootaloo asked, looking into the reassuring look on her mentor’s face.

“With me teaching you, I know so. Now let's see if we can get back to Ponyville before you run out of momentum,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing behind them, smiling a knowing smile.

Sure enough a quick look around confirmed that they had overshot Ponyville by several miles. Though they still had enough speed and altitude that Scootaloo figured she had a good chance of making it back without further help.

With the stress of the lesson over, Scootaloo was able to enjoy the momentary taste of flight. With her spirit renewed and a new hope driving her, she knew she could persevere.

Chapter 4: When Wings Are Earned

The weekly flight lessons had become about learning pegasus weather magic. And that frequently devolved into practicing kicking lightning and that tended to result in the two pegasi being chased out of Ponyville for making too much noise. Somewhere along the line they adopted the practice of just starting the lessons in the middle of nowhere.

However, today was not a day for flight lessons turned weather control lessons. Today was for crusading. All that was missing were Scootaloo’s friends. Hence why she was currently on her scooter joyriding through town, awaiting the appointed hour when her friends would be done with their chores.

The thought brought Scootaloo’s eyes to a nearby clock tower. Frowning as she realize that it was time to meet her friends right now, and unless she somehow learned teleportation in the next few seconds she’d be late to meet them at the lake as they had agreed. Not that her concerns meant anything now. She powered her wings and rocketed off on her scooter, knowing that she might be a little late but at least she wouldn’t have to keep her friends waiting long, maybe a few minutes or so.

Scootaloo buzzed past the last building on the northeast edge of town and spotted her friends on the far side of the crystal clear, blue waters of a crescent shaped lake. Her friends each had fishing poles set up by them, with a spare waiting for Scootaloo once she arrived.

Then she saw the menacing figure made of living wood, a timberwolf, prowling out of the bush mere yards behind her friends.

“Look out!” Scootaloo cried, waving her front legs franticly. But her friends were too distant to hear her words and only smiled and waved back. Powering her wings as best she could, Scootaloo did the only other thing she could think to do. Scream at the top of her lungs, “Rainbow Dash! Heeelllp!”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle turned to each other sharing perplexed looks on their faces. Apple Bloom was the first to put the question on both their minds to words, “Did she just say ‘help’?”

“I think so. But I don’t see anything wrong with her,” Sweetie Belle answered, as they looked back at their friend. The two fillies could see the look of panic on their friend's face as she rushed toward them. But other than being panicked there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with their pegasus friend that would justify calling for help like that.

With their curiosity peeked a sound that otherwise would have been ignored caught the two fillies ears. The sound of grass crumpling behind them. Turning to inspect the sound the two friends saw the timberwolf halfway out of a nearby bush. And not just any timberwolf, an oakwolf, one of the tougher breeds of timberwolf. The two fillies screamed and ran, not necessarily in that order.

Scootaloo breathed a sigh of relief. At least her friends had seen the threat and were now running around the lake’s edge. Veering to the left, Scootaloo aimed to meet them halfway.

Her relief didn’t last long though, she may not have understood the numbers behind it, but Scootaloo could still calculate intercept rates and angles in a heartbeat. And everything she knew about weaving through a crowded street on her scooter told her that the timberwolf was going to reach her friends well before she could.

Scootaloo’s eyes drifted back to the small strip of land jutting out into the lake and the unfinished dock on it. A set of wooden planks were propped up by the end post, making a decent makeshift ramp. She knew she couldn’t clear the lake ramping her scooter. But if she could get high enough, she might be able to fly-glide the rest of the way across and the straighter path would definitely get her to her friends before the timberwolf.

Scootaloo veered back toward the dock. She wasn’t sure she could make it across the lake at all but she knew she couldn’t make it with any extra weight, so she ripped her helmet off and let if fall to the ground behind her as she pushed her wings like never before.

Hopping her scooter onto the makeshift ramp, she coiled her back legs before shooting into the sky. As she felt the scooter reach the peek of it’s arch she jumped as hard as she could, sending the scooter down into the lake like a depth charge. Instantly she straightened her body into a flight configuration and changed her wings from scooter style to flight style wing beats.

Turning left, to set herself on an intercept path to her friends, Scootaloo saw that she was going to overshoot and corrected to the right a little. She had to correct to the right a second time to account for her acceleration. Scootaloo’s conscious mind failed to notice the implications that flying straight and level and accelerating under her own power meant she had achieved true flight.

Countless scooter crashes had taught Scootaloo that you never want to crash hard with your legs straight, so she bent her front knees ever so slightly. She also tensed the muscles in her neck in preparation to pull her head up. Once her legs had taken as much of the impact as possible, she wanted her chest to be the second thing to hit the timberwolf, not her head.

Scootaloo’s mind did catch these thoughts. That’s my plan? Tackle it like a living cannonball?! What kinda idiotic plan is that?! Despite her inner chastisement it was the only plan she had and more importantly she had already past the point of no return, so the only thing she could do now was see the plan through and let the chips fall where they may.

Apple Bloom was certain that she truly understood what her Granny Smith had meant when she had told the tale of when she had ‘run faster then she had in her life.’ Now also with a timberwolf on her tail, Apple Bloom was certain that she had just shattered her personal best time at the hundred-yard dash.

If she could just reach her friend Apple Bloom thought everything would be okay. Wait. Why would that help? She asked herself. If the timberwolf was willing to chase two fillies why wouldn’t it chase three? Scootaloo had her scooter, maybe she was planing on using it as a makeshift club. Yeah that has to be it. The earth pony filly reassured herself.

Thinking of her friend, where was Scootaloo? Apple Bloom knew her friend couldn’t fly but she was still the fastest pony on four wheels and she was certain she saw her pegasus friend heading around the lake the last time she saw her. Scootaloo should have been in her field of view by now. But there wasn’t anypony there.

The sound of water being disturbed caught Apple Bloom’s ears. Looking out over the lake she saw her pegasus friend flying right at her like a rocket, a small ‘V’ shaped wave of water being kicked up from the force of Scootaloo’s wake.

This revelation didn’t evade Apple Bloom’s mind. She would have cheered for her friend for finally learning to fly if another sound hadn’t caught her ear first, and the terrible implications that came with it, if it was what she thought it was. Looking behind she saw that Sweetie Belle had tripped. The timberwolf leapt. And with what she was certain was her last breath the unicorn filly screamed.

As loud as Sweetie Belle’s death cry was the thundering crack that sounded of splintering wood that came a fraction of a second latter was louder, and was even heard all the way in Ponyville’s marketplace. Hearing only the latter sound most ponies dismissed it as that of a tree falling somewhere in the distance.

One pegasus, however, knew better. She had thought she had heard a call for help from this side of town. With the new sounds to guide her, Rainbow Dash’s eyes locked onto a nearby lake. Three of the four figures on the far side of the lake were instantly recognizable. Just from the color scheme she knew the three smaller figures were the cutie mark crusaders.

A second of diving toward the distant figures was all it took for Rainbow Dash to realize the larger fourth figure was a rather mangled looking timberwolf limping towards an equally mangled looking Scootaloo. And now Apple Bloom was charging towards the timberwolf too. “Pony feathers,” Rainbow Dash muttered, as she put every ounce of strength into her dive.

Sweetie Belle sat paralyzed in fear. She had been a moment away from death, and now the death that had almost been her own was creeping ever closer to her savior. Pure horror practically made Sweetie Belle's heart stop when she saw Apple Bloom run past her toward the timberwolf. The thought of losing one friend was bad enough. The thought of losing both of her best friends was more than she could bear.

Sweetie Belle didn’t think Apple Bloom could take a timberwolf in a fight. She didn’t care how badly the timberwolf was limping. Limping. The revelation made Sweetie Belle realize that Apple Bloom wasn’t charging the wooden wolf, but was running at Scootaloo. If they could reach their pegasus friend first they could carry her away from the timberwolf faster than it could limp. But alone, not even Apple Bloom could hope to pull that off. The fear that had previously paralyzed Sweetie Belle now pushed her as she joined in Apple Bloom’s charge to aid their friend.

“Scootaloo!” The panicked cry of her friends dragged Scootaloo’s mind from unconsciousness. The waking world greeted the filly's mind with an assault of pain. Her eyes focused on the timberwolf mere feet away, limping toward her.

She tried to stand but the instant she tried to move her front legs they exploded in pain. A glance showed her that they were still straight and they didn’t look to be broken, but they sure felt that way. Looking to her friends, Scootaloo saw that the impact with the timberwolf had sent herself and the wolf tumbling quite the distance from the lakeshore.

Once again everything Scootaloo knew about scooter riding told her that the timberwolf would reach her first. Even under the most hopeful calculation, she figured the timberwolf would have a good six seconds to do whatever it wanted with her. More than enough time to deliver a fatal wound.

With her front legs unwilling to aid her, Scootaloo tried to scoot herself away from the timberwolf. But the soft dirt at her hind legs was too lose and gave way as she pushed on it. Without her front legs she couldn’t right herself enough to get any traction with only her hind legs, she was stuck on her side.

Looking back at her friends, part of her wanted to play the heroic martyr and tell them to just save themselves. But the part of her that wanted to live couldn’t give up the only hope of rescue no matter how impossible it seemed. Looking back into the timberwolf’s glowing-green eyes Scootaloo knew the truth. She was going to die.

Lost, alone and starving the timberwolf limped toward the only prey it could hope to catch. It saw in the pegasus filly’s eyes that she knew the end was near. It was nothing personal that was just the way of nature. Win and live, lose and die. The timberwolf thought. Though it could respect the pegasus filly for her warrior’s instinct, while the other two had run from it, the pegasus had tried to fight by charging in.

“Scootaloo!” the two that had evaded it called out again.

Looking over, the timberwolf saw the two healthy pony fillies were still charging right at their injured friend. Not that it mattered, the timberwolf knew it would reach the fallen pegasus first and if the other two insisted on joining their friend in its belly the starving timberwolf wasn’t about to complain.

A radiant flare of prismatic light illuminated the skies behind the timberwolf. The look of fear in the pegasus filly’s eyes vanished in an instant, a smile even graced her face as she said, “You’re in for it now.”

The timberwolf recalled how ignoring the sound of water being pushed by air had allowed the pegasus filly to blindside it when pouncing at the unicorn filly. Refusing to repeat the same mistake twice the timberwolf took the second to look at the source of the strange light.

A prismatic shockwave was tearing its way across the sky, a radiant white flare at its center. And from the center of the flare came a rainbow trail. Tracing the rainbow to its source the timberwolf saw a sky blue pegasus mare shooting across the lake like living lightning, with towering walls of water being kicked up in her wake.

The timberwolf realized something was missing from the scene before its eyes. It heard nothing. It had heard the sound of the filly shooting across the lake, so why couldn’t it hear this clearly much larger disruption to the lake? Suspecting the truth the timberwolf turned to the injured filly on the ground. The wolf lowered its twig-like ears in defeat and with its eyes tried to convey its final thought that pegasi were truly worthy opponents.

Scootaloo didn’t know what the look in the timberwolf’s eyes meant. It seemed like a mix of respect and something else. She only had an instant to try and figure it out though as the timberwolf disappeared in an instant, replaced by a rainbow that obscured her vision.

The injured filly didn’t even notice the pain as a pressure wave from her hero’s wake slammed into her, pressing her into the dirt. What she did notice was the intense ringing in her ears that drown out all other sound. And of course what she saw, there before her, inches above her face, was a rainbow wake born of a sonic rainboom. Scootaloo wanted so badly to just reach up and touch it but her front legs still refused to move. However, her neck did obey and she pushed her nose into the rainbow that obscured her view of all else. Unlike the rainbows made from liquid rainbow this one had no form to her and let her press her nose through it. She could, however, feel energy in the air where the sonic rainboom rainbow was. Satisfied, she laid her head back down and stared into rainbow until it faded with one thought echoing through her mind. I’m still alive.

“And don’t you dare even think of laying a paw… on…” Rainbow Dash cut off her threat, as she felt the lifelessness of the timberwolf in her grasp. The rampant sticky feeling on her legs told Dash that the timberwolf had suffered a fatal injury. She knew she hadn’t been gentle grabbing up the timberwolf but she hadn’t meant to kill it. Holding the timberwolf away from her body, she saw the deep impact marks in its side and at their center were two hoof-prints imbedded into the wooden creature. Hoof-prints that were too small to belong to Rainbow Dash.

Recalling the scuffmarks in the sand and dirt between the lakeshore and where the timberwolf had been, Rainbow Dash realized what must have happened and why her less than gentle removal of the timberwolf had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. She whispered, “Wow, Scoots really clobbered you huh?”

With no point in trying to shoo the timberwolf back into the Everfree Forest, Rainbow Dash dropped the dead creature’s body unceremoniously from her grasp. Pausing for a moment to check the field below when she realized how reckless it had been to drops something of that mass from this height. Satisfied that nopony was below to get hit by the falling corpse, she swung wide, returning to Scootaloo from over the lake, taking only enough time to drag her legs through the lake water to rinse the sap from them.

Cringing as she landed next to Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash looked the bloody mess of a filly over. Dash’s fears quickly faded, as a quick examination revealed that Scootaloo looked much worse than she was. The blood that coated the filly’s chest hadn’t come from any deep wounds but instead from a thousand tiny splinters, in truth the filly was hardly bleeding at all.

Rainbow Dash asked something, but to Scootaloo her hero’s voice sounded a mile away through the ringing in her ears. However, the worried look on her face said enough. “I… I’ll live. I think I cracked my front legs. And it sounds like you guys are a mile away with all this ringing in my ears. Oh my scooter is at the bottom of the lake.” Scootaloo railed off everything she could think worthy of reporting to her hero.

Dash smiled. Leave it to a young dare devil like Scootaloo to be able to feel the difference between a cracked bone and a broken one.

“I need you two at sweet apple acres, now,” Rainbow Dash commanded the two healthy fillies.

“But what about the scooter? We could…” Apple Bloom started to protest.

“I’ll come back for it latter. Right now I need to get Scoots to the hospital and I don’t have time to see if there are anymore timberwolves prowling around,” Rainbow Dash interrupted, before the earth pony filly could finish.

Sweetie Belle gave Apple Bloom a look that seemed to agree with Rainbow Dash and the two friends ran off toward town. Scooping Scootaloo up as gently as she could, Dash cringed as she felt the filly flinch in pain from the forced movement of her front legs. With that the two were off into the sky.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo was doing her best to lay still in the hospital bed while the nurse and Rainbow Dash plucked splinters from her chest. She winced as the nurse managed to pluck a fur hair or two along with a splinter. In contrast she barely even felt anything when Rainbow Dash removed the next splinter in her sights.

“You’re really good at this,” Scootaloo said to her hero.

“You know how ghastly gorge is my favorite personal practice course. Well halfway through it there’s these huge bramble bushes that are a good challenge to fly through and… let's just say my first couple of times might have involved a crash and a lot of time plucking thorns from myself,” Rainbow Dash said, with a bit of a blush on her cheeks.

A knowing smile graced Scootaloo’s face. There was no way Rainbow Dash got this good with only a couple crashes into thorn bushes. However, the filly stayed quiet, content to let her hero’s story stand.

With the last of the splinters removed and a quick cleaning later, the nurse had just finished wrapping a bandage around Scootaloo’s chest when the doctor returned, x-ray images in tow. “Well the good news is your bones only seem to be cracked, not broken. You seem to have two cracks in your left leg and one in your right.” He said, pausing for a moment to make sure the filly was listening, “judging from your record here I trust you know what that means?”

“Zero weight on them,” Scootaloo recited from memory.

“For a full week. Even though they will feel like they can take it after only a few days,” the doctor added. “Now normally I wouldn’t give a filly your age a choice but given that I know you, I’ll let you tell me. Will I need to put a hard cast on them to make sure you follow orders or can you be trusted with just the splints and soft wrap on them now?”

With the medical wrap and splints keeping her legs straight holding them up was doable with an acceptable level of pain in Scootaloo’s mind. And if she could get the doctor to treat her like a grownup in the presence of her hero that was even better. “I can stay off them with just these.”

“For a full week?” the doctor asked.

“For a full week,” Scootaloo answered, with as serious a look as she could muster.

The doctor didn’t seem to be buying her tough girl act. But before he could say anything a shout from the hall interrupted his pondering. “Hey! You can’t come back here like that! This is a hospital!”

The target of the yelling soon presented itself as a sopping wet gray pegasus mare with a yellow mane flew into the room. Simultaneously, one of the mare’s eyes fell on Rainbow Dash and the other found Scootaloo.

Scootaloo’s eyes fell on the scooter held by the soaked mail mare. “My scooter! Thank you! But… how did you know it was in the lake?”

“That’s a funny story. Somehow I had mail in my bag for sweet apple acres, even though it’s not on my part of the route. Anyway when I delivered it I ran into Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and they looked like they were worried about something. So I asked and they told me about Rainbow Dash taking you here and sending them home before they could get your scooter out of the lake.”

“So just like that? You went to fetch the scooter?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Yep, I love a good excuse to go diving! If you hit the water just right you can make this really pretty field of bubbles!” the soaked mail mare answered, inadvertently drawing the attention of everyone in the room to her cutie mark depicting several bubbles.

“Did you at least take off your mailbags before you jumped in the lake?” Rainbow Dash’s question was clearly rhetorical, as the trickle of water coming from the mailbags already answered it.

“No, why?” the mail mare answered anyway. Then looking to her mailbags added, “Oh, oops.”

“You might want to go dry those out before you deliver the rest of the mail,” Rainbow Dash suggested, having already opened the window wide enough for a pegasus to comfortably fly out.

“Thanks. Get better soon!” the ever-cheerful mail mare said, as she departed.

Sliding off the bed Scootaloo ended up sitting upright on her scooter. Then gently resting her front legs on the handlebars, she fired up her wings gently, and did a slow figure eight in the tight space available before asking, “Can I go home now?”

The doctor pondered the question for a moment before nodding, “I suppose if Miss Dash here is willing to take you home, I can let her sign you out.”

* * * * * * *

A few minutes latter and Scootaloo was motoring her way slowly down the road, away from the hospital with Rainbow Dash walking beside her. It was Dash that spoke first, “Scoots, remember today.”

“Umm okay, why?”

“Because pegasi like you are rare. But of all the pegasi I’ve met that learned to fly super late, they all had one thing in common. The awesome story of the day they learned to fly. And they all phrased it the same way. ‘The day they earned their wings.’ Today, the way you defended your friends, I’d say you did just that.”

Rainbow Dash paused for a moment to look into Scootaloo’s eyes. She saw the distant look in filly’s eyes, reveling that she was too lost in thought to respond, so Dash continued, “From what I saw, I’m guessing you flew across the lake and tackled the heck out of that timberwolf to save your friends.” Scootaloo nodded but said nothing, so her hero continued, “But what I want to know is how did your scooter end up in the lake?”

“I had to ramp off the unfinished dock to get airborne… I flew… under my own power… I really flew didn’t I?” Scootaloo said, only when the words had come from her own mouth did the realization of the day’s events finally hit her.

“You sure did Scoots. A scooter assisted takeoff huh? I’d like to see that someday. Though I guess with your front legs out of commission landing would be a bit hard. Walking too. Guess you’re going to be scooter-bound for the next week huh?”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Scootaloo answered, smiling. Somehow that thought didn’t bother her at all.