So Far...

Spitfire’s eyes shot open as her alarm kept screeching. She hit the snooze and looked at the time. 8:35 IN THE MORNING! She’s over 2 hours late! She jumped out of bed and began to get dressed. Soarin turned over and mumbled, grabbing more sheets with him.

“GET UP LAZY SHIT!” She yelled authoritatively. Soarin shot up and clenched his teeth.

“AGH MY HEAD!” He cried.

“I told you to drink more water” Spitfire replied unsympathetically and tossed him a wrinkled male uniform from her closet; one he forgot in her room a few weeks ago.

*

Soarin was finally dressed, and they disembarked to the locker room for their goggles and to get washed up; the locker room was where the bathrooms were. Spitfire trotted hastily down the hall, whereas Soarin paced carefully, trying not to clop his hooves on the ground too hard. In the locker room, everypony was busy with whatever the crap they were doing. Fleetfoot was spraying his hair to make it stiff, Misty was in a corner smoking, Rapidfire and Thunderbolt were in adjacent stalls, vomiting, and Soarin felt like joining them, while Rainbow, I, and pretty much the rest of the Wonderbolts were in the rec center, playing Apples to Apples.

“Ok Wave Chill, you judge now” Fire Streak said.

“And the green card is... malodorous. Smelly; fetid; foul.”

Rainbow Dash immediately slapped a card down. Fire Streak quickly followed. After some time Surprise and High Winds also slapped their cards down.

“Alright...  a broken leg... what? Going to grandma’s... I love my grandma so... Richard Nixon?”

Rainbow tried to suppress her giggles.

“... NO! And professional wrestling. Ummm... fuck you all all of these suck! I’ll go with broken leg. I don’t even.”

Surprise chuckled menacingly and snatched the green card.

“Ok Surprise, you’re up next to judge.”

“Hello everypony!” Spitfire said in a loud, slightly creepy voice, specifically to scare everypony.

“Oh hi Spitfire” everypony said, unaffected. “You’re up!”

“Oooh! Can I play!?!” Soarin asked excitedly, wiping the residue off his muzzle.

Spitfire rolled her eyes, unamused.

“So did you hear about the explosion at the restaurant we were at?” Rainbow asked, uninterested but bored.

“No... what explosion? We left just before both of you left so...”

Spitfire chuckled and shot that look at Soarin, which meant only one thing.

“That was an explosion? I thought that was just you Soarin.”

Soarin didn’t even pay attention at this point. He was all too used to Spitfire’s sex jokes.

Spitfire frowned and sat down and passed herself some cards. “I guess today can be our off day.”

“Message for Arthur Human!” A mailpony called out.

“Damn it my last name isn’t- fine what is it?”

The mailpony handed me an orange envelope bound with red wax. I undid the envelope and read the letter. It was from princess Celestia.

“My faithful team medic of the Wonderbolts,

I cordially invite you to the grand opening of the Royal Equestrian Aeronautics and Space Administration, where it is our goal to by the end of the decade to land a mare on the moon, to which position Luna so graciously volunteered. Yadda yadda yadda... by South East Ordianace 1.02.5A7-7U33.21”

“What’d you get yourself into this time, tiger?” Spitfire asked condescendingly.

“I thought he was a human.” Surprise joked in his usual heavily Latino voice.

“It’s a letter from Princess Celestia about some sort of aeronautical thingamahoogle, I don’t know but I’d better show up”.

“When is it?” Rainbow asked.

“Pfff, I don’t know, but knowing Celestia I should head out now. She probably times these things to the nearest millisecond”

*

“Ummm, if you would have read more carefully, it says to show up at 6 tonight. It isn’t noon yet.” Princess Celestia said, amused but disappointed. “Anyway, in the wingless pony’s long quest for flight, nopony has really had any breakthroughs, until this fine day..."

Two unicorn stallions stepped out from behind a gray tarp covering a rather large object.

“I present to you Flim and Flam Wright, and their latest invention...”

Flim and Flam dragged the cover off with their magic, revealing an aluminum and fiberglass fixed-wing aircraft.

“I call it... The Cessna 182 with Garmin G1000 Avionics Glass Cockpit”

“Wait, the Flim Flam brothers made this? I thought they were run out of business by Applejack!”

“Let me humor you, if that’s all the same with you” Princess Celestia said, handing me a scroll.

“Dear Princess Celestia,

I didn't learn anythin'! Ha! I was right all along! If you take your time to do things the right way, your work will speak for itself. Sure I could tell you I learned something about how my friends are always there to help me, and I can count on them no matter what, but truth is I knew that already too.

Reply:

My faithful apple farmer Applejack,

Well aren’t you a wise little bitch, you communist asshole. The Flim Flam Brothers created a machine which would ease everypony’s work and increase output by 300% while still maintaining the utmost care, quality, and sanitation, and yet you organize a small army to work their asses off and still manage to drive them out of town. Many stallions fought bravely and lost their lives for the cause of giving them the opportunity to free enterprise and creating new ideas that would ease everypony’s work. You sicken and disgust me, filthy peasant.”

I lowered the scroll from my head.

“So now after that whole ordeal, I hired them as government agents to build flying machines that are more controllable than hot air balloons.”

“And so we...” Flim began.

“My brother and I”

“Created this wonderful machine”

“Powered by Bernoulli’s Principle and Iranian oil”

“To fly whilst we speak”

“In tandem.”

“Alright let’s stop. But seriously, we need a test pilot to fly this, and we decided since you humans already came up with these things, maybe you can learn to fly this?”

“I’ve flown that before...” I stated matter-of-factly

“Did you now?”

“Brilliant! Off to the site we call the air strip!”

“So called because it’s a place where AIRplanes take off, and it has a nice view of the STRIP club across the street.”

“And so we’re off!”

*

I flipped on the engine and pulled the chocks. I set flaps to 20% and ran through all the crap on my checklist, and took off. The plane ran surprisingly well for a completely untested prototype, and the GPS worked wonderfully for a planet that had no orbiting satellites besides the moon. I just set the trim and continued flying to the hangars at Canterlot, giving the observing Wonderbolts an airshow, and almost got shot down by the guards. Unfortunately, the landing was the hardest part, and no doubt the roughest. Fortunately, both the plane and my body were usable after, therefore relatively speaking it was a pretty good landing.

“Wow!” I exclaimed, cutting the engine so as to not give anypony accidental prop rash. “How did you make such quality plane so fast?”

“Oh this pile of junk? That’s just a prototype!”

Flim and Flam then unveiled from behind another tarp a fully loaded F-18 and behind it a Boeing 737. Not bad at all, I must say. Now if only ponies could flight-line marshal...

*

I met Rainbow on my way back to the hangars in Canterlot.

“Where are you heading?” I asked.

“Well since we have the day off, I figured we could go to Ponyville. We haven’t seen any of our old friends in over 2 weeks! Seriously since I joined the Wonderbolts I haven’t been seeing them much at all.”

“What’s in the bag?” I asked, pointing at the bag around Rainbow’s shoulder.

“It’s just a little something for a shelf in my old home, probably to collect dust...” she said, tucking the bag away under her uniform.

“Fair enough” I said. “Shall we take the Apache there or the F-22A Raptor?

We took the Raptor.

*

We arrived in Ponyville with the usual greeting to the windows, except this time by a large jet-propelled hunk of metal. We were greeted by Twilight and Applejack, who helped us out and we went for a walk, parking the plane at the edge of the Everfree Forest. We left the keys in, we figured if anypony can figure out how to work it, they deserve to have it. We began chatting about the usual. Applejack had a cousin, Braeburn, over; Twilight read more boring books about how to properly apply for a license plate number at your local DMV. Sometime after strolling, Applejack and Twilight parted ways, and we headed for Fluttershy’s house to drop in and say hi. However, along the way, a familiar little orange pegasus walked into our path, staring at the ground.

“Hi Scootaloo!” Rainbow said cheerfully.

“Don’t you hay me!” Scootaloo rebounded.

Rainbow withdrew, shocked. She looked up at Rainbow, her eyes welling with tears. “Are you ok?”

“Ever since that human showed up and then when you left to fly for the Wonderbolts, I could never see you! I thought it would be great before for you to join them, but now I see that it’s all horribly wrong!” Scootaloo cried, the tears building up in her eyes releasing down her face. I backed away, fearing incrimination for taking Rainbow away from Scootaloo.

“You were always like a big sister to me! We used to play together, even though sometimes you were too busy, but still you would always pat me on the head. You tried to teach me how to fly, even though I didn’t have my big filly wings yet, and even when I would fall and cry and not want to get up you made me anyway, because you knew I could!”

“Squirt, I didn’t-“

“And that one time when I fell from a tree and scratched my hind leg, you put a bandage on it, even though you usually would say it’s no big deal. You knew it wasn’t a big deal! You just wanted to. And that one time my mane was all rainbow and I had your cutie mark on my flank; I said I fell into paint, but I really didn’t, I just wanted to be more like you! I’m always trying to be more like you!

You are the only pony who believes in me; who cares about me! I look up to you! But now you’re never here and I’m all alone. Sure Applebloom and Sweetie Belle are here, but it’s just not the same.”

Rainbow picked up a hoof and wiped the tears from Scootaloo’s big, round purple eyes.

“Squirt, you’re way too cool for these tears!” she said, kissing her forehead. She reached into her suit and pulled out a little Rainbow Dash Wonderbolt plushie and gave it to Scootaloo.

“I’ll always be with you. I’ll never leave you; I’ll never forget about you. You are a little sister to me.”

Rainbow and Scootaloo hugged, this time tears streamed from both of them. I decided to just leave them alone and headed back to town.

*

The day in town was eventful, but not interesting at the least. I went to an electronics store run by Palestinian ponies who tried to sell me hacked black market equipment. When I asked them why they say it’s new they reply “Is new to you!” I spent about half an hour in pointless argument with the stallion, really just because I had nothing better to do. I saw Twilight walking through town, and she stopped just to explain to me non-Newtonian matter, like wet corn starch and ketchup. And that, my friends, is how you kill an hour of your life.

*

I decided to check up on Rainbow and Scootaloo, because when I get bored I do stupid things. Like write-the-f-word-on-a-bathroom-mirror-in-front-of-a-teacher stupid things (that is hypothetical; I never actually did that).

“And look!” Scootaloo said excitedly, and she unfolded one of her wings in front of Rainbow, revealing a little asymmetrical feather appearing in the back row of her wings.

“Is that what I think it is?” Rainbow asked, her face glowing.

“Yeah! It’s a big filly feather!

“Well, congrats on your first remex, hot shot!” she said, nudging an elbow into Scootaloo’s side.

Scootaloo giggled. “You’re so funny when you do that!”

“What?”

“When you call me names like ‘squirt’ or ‘tiger’ or ‘hot shot’”.

“I’m sorry, would you like it if I stopped?”

“No! No, please!” Scootaloo exclaimed, hugging Rainbow’s foreleg.

“Now that I’m becoming a big filly, what other cool things will I be able to do?”

“Listen, squirt, if I told you every cool new thing that starts to happen at puberty, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun discovering for yourself!” Rainbow said philosophically, and buried her muzzle in Scootaloo’s little purple mane.