Relieved

Pegasi are free-spirits by nature; in some ways it is their gift. Where earth ponies need their farms and tools to live, pegasi make their homes out of the very weather they craft. If a unicorn wants to travel, there's tickets to purchase, bags to pack, carts to maintain, and reservations to make; when a pegasus wants to leave, she just goes.

Selling her home was a relatively easy affair, owing to the high turnover and massive real estate sales mechanisms that always seem to exist in military towns - a nice young couple that'd just been relocated from Fairweather NAS in Baltimare snapped it up within a week of it hitting the market. Not that anypony at the realtor's office was suprised, really; she'd priced the place to move fast.

When she left, she'd handed them the keys and took off heading west with two saddlebags - it was all she needed.

South of Las Pegasus in the dry, barren wastes of the San Palomino Desert lies an installation called the Roanopah Test Range. Back in the early days, the all-or-nothing wing and a prayer days, Roanopah was where the real flying happened. This was where General Firefly assembled the first Wonderbolts, a team of young pegasi who'd shown The Right Stuff in flight school, to serve as Princess Celestia's elite aerial display team. When Commander Easyglider revolutionized the Wonderbolts aerial techniques, it had been Roanopah's hot sands in which the first hoof-drawn diagrams were etched. When Captain Mach Hunter set out to smash that chromatic brick wall in the sky, it was Roanopah where the rainboom's rumble first echoed. For professional fliers, it was heaven.

Was, anyway.

While E.U.P. emphasis on Royal Equestrian Air Force wings in general and the Wonderbolts in particular had tailed off significantly over the past half-century, it was the massive drawdowns of the post-reunification defense restructuring that had hurt the most. Roanopah's mission had been scaled back to serving as a part-time desert training center for the E.U.P. Guard; the only permanent installation features still operational were the garrison headquarters building, a small commissary and a small museum dedicated to the Wonderbolts.

And, of course, Barns's place.

The original Barnstormer had passed some years back but the place stayed open anyway; mostly, it seemed, out of equal parts habit and obstinance. Decades of sun had beat down on the tin roof and cedar walls, fading and warping them to the point of caricature. On the wall hung framed pictures of the great flyers who had once frequented the bar but had gone on to their final rewards. Spitfire looked them over carefully as she waited for the barmaid, trying to match the young faces in those faded pictures with those of the aviation giants she knew from history.

"Which Wing?"

Spitfire swiveled on her stool to gawp the old pony at the end of the bar. He was aged to the point that his mane had gone past silver and was working it's way up to a bleached bone white. His face was hard, sunbaked and wind-whipped into tanned leather.

"'S'cuse me, Sir?"

"Which Wing. Which Wing were you in?" He reached up to his face and pulled off his Aviator sunglasses, revealing the coldest, sharpest crystal blue eyes Spitfire had ever seen.

"Oh, uh... Third Wing, Twelfth Squadron."

"Mm. Fort Ledge. Wonderbolts." He affirmed to himself.

Spitfire couldn't help but be slightly taken aback.

"How do you know?"

"Just an educated guess. You carry yourself like one. Head up and on a swivel, eyes assessing."

"You got me." She shrugged in mock resignation.

"Nope, no Ma'am. Don't see many of your kind around here anymore. Not in ages. Bet you're here to see the museum."

"Yeah. It's closed though. Permanently, too, from the looks of it."

"That's because," said the elderly pony as he downed his beer, "I'm here, and not there. Could be bothered to take a flight over yonder, if you're still interested in seeing it."

~~~

The museum itself was one of the base's cavernous old corrugated steel hangars, repurposed and modified to display and house all the Wonderbolts memorabilia. The caretaker fumbled with his keyring, trying several before finally getting the right one and opening the main door.

"Wait here, I'll get the lights."

Spitfire coughed as she peered over his shoulder into the darkness. Sun shone through the high slit windows at the building's peak, casting slender beams of light through the dust particles in the air.

*CLACK*

The overhead lamps crackled and hummed to life in sequence as the caretaker flipped the arcane switches in the back of the building, bathing the displays below in a dim artificial glow. Cobwebs and a thin layer of undisturbed dust lay on the exhibits.

Spitfire stepped forward into the building, hoofsteps echoing in the expanse. "This is..." She trailed off.

"Yeah, I know. I have to apologize for the state of the place. Pretty much the only ponies who come here now come through when there's a rotation through the training area. Other than that, since they opened up the big fancy E.U.P. museum in Canterlot, it's open 'by appointment only' anymore, which is to say almost never."

"This is AMAZING! Commander Easyglider's flight jacket! Colonel Purple Dart's pipe!" Spitfire buzzed from exhibit to exhibit like an schoolfilly, poring over the details of the different placards.

The caretaker chuckled at her unabashed excitement, watching her as he leaned up against an exhibit wall. "Think you'll make it here someday?"

Spitfire drooped visibly as she thought about it. "Yeah, probably not. Kinda got 'retired' if you know what I'm saying. I'll never be like any of these ponies."

"That so? Come look at this exhibit."

He gestured for her to follow to a display labeled Wild Mustangs.

Spitfire read the placard beneath the display table quietly aloud. "This exhibit is dedicated to the nonconformists who led in the face of convention, without fear, favor or hope of reward..."

The caretaker pointed at a picture of a tall, muscular azure and white stallion.

"Colonel Jay Bird, who invented the L.O.O.P. system and revolutionized improvisational aerial maneuvers. Look, Orient, Opt, Proceed? Never heard of it? I guess they don't teach it anymore at the Academy since they're more into routines and formations, these days. The Royal Equestrian Air Force never did appreciate him, but the Seapony Assault Force sure loves him."

He pointed at another, a pure white pegasus, and continued.

"How about Colonel Wingding, who got dumped in a nowhere outpost in Saddle Arabia for being so bold as to say that Generals ought to be accountable for winning wars? After being uninvited to speak at the Academy, you'd think he'd have just disappeared, but no; he's one of Equestria's foremost military policy experts now."

Spitfire looked over the exhibit with a small lump in her throat, looking at how all these ponies had succeeded even after they'd left service. Something was out of place, though.

"Hey, Colonel Hunter's glasses are missing." She jerked her head at a peg in the display where the Hay-Ban aviator glasses were meant to be hung. A faint outline in the dust indicated they'd been taken recently.

"They don't do me much good collecting dust in the display case, kid."

You'd have needed a special sort of jack to lift her jaw off the floor.

"You're... You're..." Spitfire boggled quietly.

"Hush, or they're all gonna want one." He winked slyly at her.

"What.. Why's an Equestrian hero like you out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"What else should I be doing? It's nice and quiet, no traffic, no noise. I'm happy here." Mach Hunter offered.

"I just can't believe I finally got to meet you." Spitfire gushed exuberantly, "Ever since I was a little filly, I wanted to grow up to be like you - a great flier."

"Well, kid, I'll make you a deal. I'll trade you these glasses of mine," he said, smoothly pulling the vintage Hay-Bans off his forehead, "With one proviso."

Spitfire nodded silently.

"Someday, when you've made it big, bring them back here. Do something worth inspiring some young filly or colt to greatness, and we'll consider the debt repaid."