Prelude: Waiting for the Train
Author's Note
This story had been unpublished for so long. It was one of the first ones I wrote. In a way it was meant to be a sort of personal journal. I thought I'd have a little bit of fun with it and this is what happened. I never continued with it and never will. So I hope it's at least somewhat entertaining.
Prelude: Waiting for the Train
Prelude
This train station smells bad and fillies are running around without supervision. It’s a good thing I don’t have to be here much longer, my train to basic training should be arriving soon. My father is the reason why I decided to join the Royal Equestrian Air Force. He was part of the 47th Air Battalion during the First Changeling War. My mother told me stories about his life before he was killed in action during the largest airborne battle in known history.
I admired his medals and awards all my life and knew even when I was a filly that someday I would join up and follow in his hoofsteps. I really only have one memory of him while he was alive. I was about six years old and he was watching me as I rode my new scooter around the street in front of our house. I had lost control and wound up tipping over onto my wing, luckily it didn’t break, and he ran to me and pulled me to my hooves. Wiping a tear from my muzzle he said, “Scootaloo, there are times in life when you may fall and get hurt, but when it happens you stand up and keep on scootin’.”
His words kept me going through my school days when I was made fun of for not having my cutie mark. My mother was working two full-time jobs to support our small family and keep food on the table. This made things difficult when I needed a shoulder to cry on so I usually just ended up in my father’s study looking at his uniform and flag. The teasing became easier to handle once the Crusaders were founded because I had Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom.
We had many adventures trying to get our cutie marks, but for me it was good to just have friends. When we finally got ours, (Apple Bloom in architecture, and Sweetie Belle in stage performance) the founding crusaders parted ways. My cutie mark is a wooden wheel in the middle of a storm of feathers. Try as they might no pony seemed to be able to figure out what it meant. I must admit that even I don’t know what it means.
I still regret that my friends and I grew distant but I moved away shortly after and had a fresh start in Fillydelphia. It wasn’t that bad in my new school but I grew a little restless being surrounded by stuck up snobs that had no interesting hobbies. I hung out with Babs for a little bit but she quickly fell into that crowd after she got her cutie mark.
Rainbow Dash came by every once in a while to give flying lessons. Once my feathers started getting bigger it got to be a lot easier and soon I was beating her in races, although she would never admit to it. Those visits stopped soon after she was accepted in the Wonder Bolts based solely on her sonic rainboom.
My father always said the Wonder Bolts weren’t ponies to look up to as heroes because they are just a morale unit and never actually saw combat. Apparently he told Rainbow Dash this once and she cried, telling him she didn’t believe it before running away. I asked her about this and she just muttered something about my dad being a jerk before flying off.
I had talked to my mom when I decided to join the military but she wanted nothing to do with it. Four times I tried to convince her that it would be for the better, but she forbade me from joining and stormed off to work. I haven’t been home since then, staying at a friend’s house until my recruiter called me to say I was leaving. That’s why I’m sitting in this train station writing in this journal Sweetie Belle gave me a few years ago. I don’t know who I’m writing to, if anyone, but it makes some sense to do this so my kids, if I have any, will know what I went through.
Chapter 1: Training Begins
Wow, the last few days have been crazy. So, I ended up arriving at the training base at around ten in the evening. A few other ponies and myself were herded into a small conference room to have our squadrons assigned to us. After that they took us to another small room to fill out paperwork for what seemed like hours. They gave us a small snack before ushering us off into yet another room where we got yelled at. We were then issued our rain gear then sent down a small hallway to split off according to the squadron we were assigned.
I didn’t think that many of us were in the same squadron, but I think about eighty others got on that bus with me. When we arrived at our squadron dorm we were split up again, this time by gender. A gruff, war-hardened stallion approached my group and in a gravelly voice said, “Good evening ladies, I am Sergeant Ruger and I will be your instructor for the next few weeks. Well, now that introductions are out of the way, I want you to know that I am not your friend. My job is to make you all war-ready and able to fulfill your duties as protectors of Equestria.”
He spoke like that for a long time and he didn’t seem like he was that bad of a guy. That was, until, one of the younger mares in our group started to giggle.His attitude changed drastically and he bolted towards her stopping only when his muzzle was less than an inch away from hers. He started to yell at her and she looked so scared that she may have been close to wetting herself. That went on for a while longer before he yelled at the rest of us to grab our stuff and go upstairs.
The dorm, if you can call it that, is basically just a large room split by a wall and filled with beds. the bathroom is pretty much the same and is set in the small hallway that runs from the exit door to the day room. I’m not sure why it’s called a day room, it’s just a small room with no chairs save the one that is behind the only desk. We were rushed in there and it got cramped very quickly as we stored our civilian stuff in a small closet.
Sergeant Ruger yelled at us to sit down and when we didn’t do it quickly enough he had us stand back up. He repeated this until he was satisfied that we were doing it fast enough. Then he went off on another rant before sending us to bed. When the lights went out after we found the beds we were assigned, it got eerily quiet. Sleep came easily as I was exhausted but I was woken up some time later to the sound of muffled sobs. I tried to ignore it and eventually I fell back to sleep. This didn’t last either because about an hour later Sergeant Ruger came in. He started banging on beds with a stick and yelling at all of us to wake up and fall into a line in the hallway. We were getting our uniforms and it would also be the first time we marched in formation.
For a while, as we marched towards clothing issue, everything was fine until one of the girls fell out of step. We were immediately ordered to halt and drop down to do wing push-ups. We did this while Sergeant Ruger ran forward and started yelling at the girl who messed up. We pushed for what had to be twenty minutes before we continued on. No one liked that girl for what happened but she never fell out of step again. She had probably heard about sock parties and was afraid we might throw one for her if she did screw up.