“YAAAAAHHH-HHAAA-HA!” Skasis screamed out in thrill as Commander Hurricane hurtled the both of them throughout the storming sky heading back to Pegasopolis from the meeting they had just left.

“So different in the sky than on your hooves?” the Commander asked rhetorically. Skasis looked up at his carrier in response, still with a beaming smile of the thrill he got from being flown.

“You have a relentless enthusiasm for flight, and quite frankly I like your attitude,” she said, to his pleasant surprise.

Both aimed and kept their heads forward as the Commander flew them at tearing speed through the storm that was coming down. Lightning flashed with frequency near and far, one bolt even blasting down right behind them. Skasis could feel the prickling tingle as his fur stood up and all but reached out in the electricity’s direction. At the same time, the falling rain was beating in Skasis’s face with the force considerable of a tropical cyclone, mostly because of the speed the Commander was going.

“You want to live in the sky?” she called to him, having to yell for him to hear even though he was hanging in her hooves right below. “Let’s see what you can handle Prissy Hooves!” she dared him without option, growing a grin of her own.

With no further warning, the Commander instantly spiralled them into circling slow-barrel rolls, making sure Skasis feels as much inertia and G-forces as she can make him. After a few moments of it, she threw the two of them downward and into a closed-loop sweeping turn. They whirled endlessly around a large circumference of air, faster and faster as they dropped lower and lower and the column tightened with every loss of altitude.

By the time Skasis realized she was creating a tornado through their motions, he was experiencing what he guessed had to be nearly five Gs and nearing six. He had never felt such a force acting on him before, crushing his body inward from behind and pulling outwards on him so furiously that he rapidly began questioning whether the Commander could even maintain her grip on him. It seemed as if . . . if the Commander let go, Skasis would have gone jetting away into oblivion.

The Commander took down to the ground, literally, driving the funnel wedge to its sharpest point, until the earth was no more than a meter away. And then she canceled the Higgs field with the mass-negating magic inherent in all Pegasi wings that allowed them to fly despite the proportion of their wings to their equine bodies saying they shouldn’t be capable of flight. Skasis could feel the disruption; the Commander inverted all of her momentum upward, averting the intentional near-crash, but leaving Skasis’s body to the first law of motion, still yearning to impact against the ground. The vertigo induced on him was so intense, his vision horizontally elongated out of any field of recognition.

Their climb back up towards the underside of the storm clouds was far more paced, enough for is vision to slowly blur back to normal over the course of it. The Commander almost seemed to be taking her time just to make sure that Skasis got thoroughly, thoroughly drenched by the downpour, despite his already being so from plowing through the rain just moments ago at half-mach.

Only once they climbed above the clouds, emerging out over the storm, did the Commander finally speak to him again.

“So? Enjoying yourself now?” she asked him, still with the same mischievious smirk on her face.

“. . . I’ve never done anything that exhilarating in my life!” he admitted more gleefully than anything he could recently remember.

She looked down at her with her final look of surprise, one that she then conceded quickly to a grin of pleasant disbelief.

“I’ll admit that I never believed a unicorn like you was possible, or any ground-dweller for that matter,” she told him.

“Well, I’ve always been a freak,” he dismissed her still-lingering surprise.

“A what?” she asked.

Skasis had to let out a small sigh. Apparently the word freak hadn’t been created yet either. “Even to other unicorns,” he said, “I’m not normal.”

“No, you’re exceptional,” she responded.

Skasis was hit so hard by the surprise of her words, that was as if he had slipped a fell jaw-first onto the ground while doing push-ups, the reference even only arising in his mind because she had been making him perform some every day.

She saw pretty clearly that Skasis was dumbfounded at receiving another compliment from her, so went ahead and explained herself. “You’ve put our differences aside more than any of us three leaders have, and more than I ever would have been able to do had I never caught you trespassing,” she said and then went silent for a moment, looking straight ahead across the night, reflecting. “You’ve made me more accepting than I was, just in these few weeks of your conscripted medical service,” she said to him then.

The amount of appreciation being directed at him, despite the Commander’s cold and harsh voice, felt more meanignful than any Skasis had ever received before, to point of him having no verbal reaction for it.

“Thanks . . . really, Sir,” he ended up eventually managing to say, unsure of what else to.

***

The Commander paced back and forth in front of Skasis as before, only swifter this time and without the piercing air of scrutiny.

“You, Prissy Hooves, Skasis Ignition Paradigm, have proven yourself capable of the soldier-worthy qualities I never thought any ponies but Pegasi could possess. You have also proceeded to trot past the differences that have kept our races apart for so long, and have shown a shocking development of strong loyalty to Pegasopolis, and to your commanding officer,” she said to him as she paced about and he stood in place.

The Commander ceased her pacing for a brief moment, shutting her eyes for a second before opening them again and resuming. “And you have done me an unforgettable favor, helping to bring back my sister . . . my one and only friend,” she said, with a softness in her voice Skasis hadn’t yet heard. It almost sounded . . . fragile.

Skasis is wide-eyed but straight-mouthed, letting the surging floodwaters that were her compliments drain into him, while wondering with uncertainity what this was leading into.

The Commander suddenly turned abruptly and stood right in front of Skasis, facing him directly.

“Understand that this has NEVER been done before,” she began, “and may NEVER be done again. You’ve showed me that you’re a soldier, or at least through your loyalty, that you could easily be made into one.” Her look was firm and resolved by the end of her words, after which a few instants passed in silence.

“I’m enlisting you in My Military,” she stated bluntly without any reserve whatsoever, though Skasis could the approval still in her voice, and his eyes lifted open even wider than they already were.

“You are now Private Paradigm,” she told him, “you will obey the orders of any other member of My Military with a higher rank than your own. You will be primarily under MY direct Command, and under the subsequent charge of Lieutenant Stratomane. Have I made myself clear, Private?”

“Yes Sir,” Skasis answered with a true and proper salute.

“Excellent,” she commended his acceptance. “Your duties as previously assigned will resume tomorrow,” she immediately went into explaining, “Lieutenant Stratomane will take you around the city to the last remaining families reporting ill fillies and colts. After this, I will arrange to begin having you taken to bring medical assistance to the Unicorns and Earth Ponies on the ground.”

“In a way, you’re going to become what you impersonated in the first place,” she said looking partway over her shoulder before continuing to walk off.

Skasis waited to observe if the Commander was going to turn around to say anything else to him. When she didn’t, he decided to look over himself, taking notice of how much off a cleaning job their rocketing flight through the rain had accomplished, and decided to go ahead and finish it real quick himself as he left the large foyer as well.

He went on going about using his magic to push the water still trapped in and beneath his fur back and forth as he walked off towards his small quarters. He only went about doing such for the moment it took him to reach the opening to his room and then ceased the process, magically pulling all the water he could concentrate enough to grasp with his horn’s aura out of his fur letting it fall away into and through the cloud beneath him as a fine mist.

Skasis only noticed afterward that the Commander had returned, obviously having heard the quite audible spell.

“What are you doing, Private?” she asked, mildly suspicious.

“Uh . . .” Skasis froze up for several seconds, struggling and failing to think of some way to explain without sounding awkward, “just, washing myself, Sir . . . with magic.”

She looked indifferent for the most part, and actually just shrugged before beginning to say, “Hmf, a bit excessive after such a flight through torrential rain, and still a fair display of Prissyness on your part, but not a prohibited action. I was never stopping you from doing anything of the sort, Prissy Hooves. It’s the lengthy soaking ground dwellers, and Unicorns in particular take in your bathing that’s looked on as vanity up here, not the action of washing yourself. In fact I was waiting to see if you’d show the courage to go ahead and do it yourself; I’d assumed you’d readily have some means with your magic to do so with. But you didn’t, so my taking you through the rain shower earlier this evening served a second purpose of doing it for you, the manner in which most of US typically wash.”

Skasis’s head began to fall slowly forward, per usual in the aftermath of a negative line from her, though now he kept from hanging his head completely . . . now that he’d really let it sink into him that she wasn’t just trying to degrade him because she thought little of him.

“Being willing to put yourself at risk is the greatest quality of a soldier, and by far the most basic and foundational,” she suddenly said to him. “No matter how small the first risk taken is, that first time you choose that path willingly, it will ALWAYS lead to the willingness of self-sacrifice,” she explained.

Skasis’s mind goes through a great revalation as he comprehends the truth of what she says.

“I have every confidence in you, after all that you’ve shown, Private. I feel it in my wings that you’ll find yourself at that point in time,” she declared just as she turned away again, leaving Skasis standing there with newly-lifted confidence and esteem.

In the mood her words had left him, he decided to go on and dry himself off, throwing his head up as his horn lit and a good waft of air was drawn in and up by the spell, breezing through his fur and mane, and even lifting his mane. At the sounds behind her, the Commander looked over her shoulder to find the sight of Skasis with his head tilted half-way back, his fur rippling with artificial wind and his forelock mane billowing upward in the draft.

The Commander . . . didn’t even know what it was she suddenly felt throughout that and the proceeding moments. Her eyes fixed themselves to Skasis in his brief, and unintentional display, and still remain on him after it ends and he brings his head back down to level and reopened his brilliant green eyes. For a unicorn stallion, he actually began to appear to her . . . like a stallion. There was muscle under his fur, un-toned and un-built, but she clearly observed that he was not entirely physically delicate, or elegant. His stature, his fur, his mane, his eyes, the feeling itself lost on her, she is begging to feel an attraction to him, the first she’s ever felt towards any pony in her life.

Her mind comes back into clarity as Skasis starts to comb his mane into its normal, well-kept style. She felt oddly drawn to look upward at her own mane, seeing an unkept, greasy, course, black set of hair as short in the front as Skasis’s and with her flat-end military cut assuring none of her bangs varied in length from the other.

Skasis then looked up and saw her making an offset face at her own mane. He felt compelled to say something reassuring to her. But, as the thought of making some kind of approachful comment to a mare entered his head, his body began to run cold, or feel so on the outside, while slowly starting to sweat at the same time as the triggered cold transitioned over to heat.

Skasis let his heart go and go, and after it reaches one hundred and fifty, he made a pounding choice to cross a line that he had never conceived. He tried so hard not to sound awkward, and actually succeeded by a half, he thought.

“Your mane looks really lovely . . .” he said to her, physically wrought with nervousness.

Skasis watches as the Commander’s irises constrict from the surprise as she brought them back down from looking up to her mane. For a single fleeting instant, their expressions are unchanging, his of neutral fear, and hers of her surprise at what he had actually just said.

But then . . . Skasis’s heart sunk so fast when Commander Hurricane’s eyebrows dropped down. Her eyes narrowed, very slowly, and her chipped ear began twitching. The worst part of all however, and the most frightening, was how her pupils so tightly, like something looking onto a target.

“Watch your words, Prissy Hooves,” she threatened him an unnervingly level, but still chilling voice. “Such comments have NO place whatsoever between you and me,” she said.

With her final words uttered, the Commander finally entered her own quarters, and kicked the cloud shut behind herself with a force that could shatter Diamond.

Skasis was left saddened, and alone, slowly turning his head after a moment and taking the final steps into his own room, sealing himself in.

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! RRR! . . . Why?” Skasis yelled and demanded from himself in his thoughts as lied on his back on the small little cot.

“What is this? Why did I do that?” he started yelling at himself in his head, “Why did I do EVERY STUPID thing I’ve ever done in my life? EVERYTHING I do is a mistake to somepony. EVERYTHING I do just ends up making me look like . . .” he stopped just to exhale forcefully out of his stress. “I’m not anything impressive or special like Cobalt Shroud, I’m not powerful like Shooting Star, and I’m not the doctor everypony here thinks I am, and I’m not even smart no matter what the University’s stupid exam scores and thesis records say. I’m an arrogant, condescending, stuck-up, PRISSY, selfish, spoiled-brat of a coward. I’m a pony nopony wants to be around . . .”

And then the answer to the why he’d thrown at himself regarding what had just happened with the Commander finally hit Skasis like a ton of bricks, in the face.

“. . . and I’m in love with her . . .” he realized.

Skasis laughs, physically, outside of his thoughts, for just a few seconds.

“Me, me and her,” he went on thinking, “wow, what a GREAT social pair. What the Hay am I doing! And why? Why do I have to be like this!? Why her? Why here, why now? And why . . . why couldn’t Himmel have at least been stranded her with me?”

Skasis let his vision onfocus the way one can if they delve so deep into their thoughts their eyes begin to drift about without a mind-directed focal target.

“Because you’ve somehow managed to fall in love with her. But why?” he kept berating himself for answers, thinking there on his narrow bed. “No explaining,” he thought to himself, while his mind randomly jumped back to a memory from one of the astronomy courses he’d taken, “like a singularity . . . like a black hole. It doesn’t matter that a gravitational force powerful enough to reverse the direction of photons would have to consist of the equivalent of infinite mass. You don’t argue with a singularity that it’s only composed of one collapsed star . . . you just get pulled in.”

Skasis sat up then and looked out the small window at the few stars he could see, more than ever right then wishing so desparately that he would see his brother’s silhouette flying in towards the window. But there was nothing: no hawk-shaped shadow cast against the light of the stars, just the blinking dots of white alone by themselves . . . just like he was.

“Himmel, warum bist du nicht hier bei mir?” he asked the empty air in Germane as if his pet hawk were actually there
Skasis fell back on his cot, and laid there for a long time, without sleep, without his Pet and brother, Himmel, without any idea of what was ultimately going to happen to him, and without the power to deny what he was feeling.

He said one word out loud, just before he forced himself to just shut down and go to sleep. It was just a whisper, “Commander . . .”

Author's Note

Well, here's chapter 9. Sorry to anypony/everypony who enjoys it but the gaps between chapter uploads are probably going to jump up to an average 4-5 days between chapters instead of the usual 2-3. Just for the next few weeks, as I'll be travelling about and such for this last month of summer before Fall semester starts up here at UAF (my university: University of Alaska Fairbanks)

To explain references in case anypony missed them in previous author's notes, Cobalt Shroud and Shooting Star were Skasis two friends back in modern/present-day Equestria (not modern as in "modern", but as in when the show takes place, you know what I mean).

Also, once again, Himmel is the name of his pet hawk, whom he obviously calls his brother rather frequently. And yes "Germane" is literally just real-life German, I'm not making up the words I'm using for it. And Germany/German hadn't been pony-punned yet by anypony I know so I jumped on it.
The rough translation of what he said was: "Himmel, why aren't you here with me?" He's experiencing disconnection issues, just like I did when I first moved up here for college and I had to leave my cat, Jessie, whom ironically I indeed regard as my sister since she's been with us since I was 6 or 7, but I had to leave her with my parents. But I get to see her every Winter break and every August.

Final note, I'll state again that I was debating creating a Tumblr Ask blog for Skasis and Commander Hurricane, together as a pair in one blog. If anypony is even remotely interested in the potential creation of such please, please do let me know, as it would definitely motivate me to actually start doing it :)