Soaring Together, Alwaysby MaxojirChaptersPrologue: Dangling a PieFor you, the bestBetter than a Best FriendPrologue: Dangling a PieThe frown that was strewn across the blue Pegasus’s face was absolutely huge, and his head hung level with his back. His eyes too added to his look in that moment, narrowed half-way open, but being so from his eyebrows pressing downward instead of from any saddened weight to his eyelids. It was annoyance, annoyance and aggravation, and the whole of that expression was even cast in shadow as a bright yellow wing stretched out just above him and began patting him on the head. “Awww, come on Soarin! Nopony wants to be a wingpony but at least they made US a team!” the flaring yellow Pegasus mare that the wing belonged to prodded the pouting stallion with words, to which he gave no response other than an exhale through his nose that was just loud enough to be heard. “Aren’t you even happy that we got paired up together?” she asked further, finally retracting her wing back to her side and stepping forth from her place beside him to face him more directly. “It’s not that; I didn’t think they would with how everypony knows they don’t like putting friends together, so yeah I was kinda hoping they would make me a lead pony since I thought there was no way we'd be paired up anyway.” Soarin finally spoke up and answered his friend. “Well yeah, I wasn’t seriously expecting them to put us together either, but come on! Us two as a team? This is gonna be the best!” She kept on with her attempts at rousing Soarin out of his moping state. Though she was soon interrupted by a fellow cadet with an unmistakable lisp to her speech. “Don’t go getting too far ahead of yourself, Spitfire. One good flying audition doesn’t prove anything!” A blue Pegasus with a cloud-white mane mocked Spitfire, though doing so with a friendly smirk. “Well well, if isn’t Footsie.” Spitfire said back in the same tone, the mention of the name drawing a scowl out from the other mare. “So? Who’s wingpony’d they make you?” Spitfire added on the inquiry. “Hah, hah, funny funny, Spitty!” The blue mare shot back with a nick of her own, and went to correct Spitfire, “for your information: I’M the leadpony.” She in no way withheld herself from a using a boastful tone and ending by wearing a grin to match it. Her grin vanished though, the instant Spitfire just started laughing. “Wow, Fleetfoot as a leadpony? Haha-who’s got enough bad luck to be stuck as YOUR wingpony?” the yellow mare teased the question to her friend, who just glared back at her for a good few seconds before she retaliated with anything. “Hmpf! Hey Rapidfire! Get over here!” Fleetfoot shouted off over her shoulder, resulting in a Pegasus stallion galloping up next to her a few seconds later. He skidded hard to a halt to stand perfectly right beside her and even threw himself into the statuesque seated pose Wonderbolt posters always displayed the team members in. It drew an approving smirk from Fleetfoot, and even mildly impressed looks from Soarin and Spitfire. “You need me, Fleets?” the new stallion asked eagerly, turning to his leadpony just in time to receive a restrained hoof-jab to his mouth. “There’s a FOOT after that, and there is definitely no S after the T!” she scolded him from an eager smile into a nervous one. “Ah-right, eh-sorry Fleetfoot,” Rapidfire made his stammering apology while timidly lifting one hoof from the ground and gently touching it to the dirt every few seconds. “That’s better!” Fleetfoot approved before she spun back to Spitfire again. “See?” she asked, grabbing Rapidfire with one foreleg over his shoulder as she did, “MY wingpony’s actually excited about being paired up with me!" Rapidfire very visibly blushed both as Fleetfoot threw her foreleg over his shoulder and more so right after as she spoke about his attitude towards being partnered with her. “Unlike SOMEPONY’s sulking teammate,” Fleet foot added her last mocking bit to her bout of speaking. “Hey!” Soarin suddenly said back to her before Spitfire even could, “I am not sulking, or moping, or pouting! I was just expecting to me made somepony else’s leadpony. I have NO gripes about being her wingpony!” he declared, standing up and point a hoof at Spitfire as he referred to her. “Sorry, duly noted, Pie Face,” Fleetfoot ended in an irresitable snicker that Rapidfire joined briefly and Spitfire wasn’t even able to keep from contributing two laughs to. All Soarin did was glare, hard, with narrowed eyes and without even glaring at anypony in particular. Spitfire stopped herself quick and directed a dismissive look at Fleetfoot as she told her, “Yeah, yeah, Footsie, why don’t you and your little yes-stallion get going and go get some practice in instead of running your mouth?” Rapidfire’s face turned even more red, even as Fleetfoot released him in a shove. “Ha! Sure, whatever you say, our self-proclaimed future captain. See you on the aerial obstacle course,” she casted her last words at Spitfire before she took off with Rapidfire immediately flying after her. Spitfire waited for a few seconds until the other pair was definitely long gone, then she looked over at Soarin once they were alone. His glare had let up a bit, but not by much. She let her eyelids come down a ways, and put on a light smile as she placed a hoof on his shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry for laughing with them about that; I can’t help that one sometimes, but I know that stuff still gets to you,” she made sure to be thorough in her apology. It was enough to get an exasperated sigh out of the stallion with the notoriously awkward voice, and to result in him finally picking his head back up after. “Listen, Soarin, just forget about it. Fleetfoot just like to egg at other ponies and we both know she’s her own share of full of herself. But about this wingpony and leadpony stuff, just listen,” Spitfire went talking to him with a much more gentle voice than most ponies were used to hearing from her and waiting until Soarin met her gaze to keep going with what she wanted to say, “I get that it’s probably really upsetting not to get picked for leadpony, but I’ll tell you something right now.” All Soarin did was make a noise, barely anything more than a grunt, just enough for Spitfire to decide he meant for her to go on. “I know for fact that you’re only a wingpony because you got paired up with me, and I refuse to believe anything else. Yeah, you’re pretty clueless sometimes, and you’re kind of a dork,” she still kept going, only pausing for a second when he gave her a look at being called that, “but out there’s totally different. Out there in the sky, you’re something else, and no weird voice or stupid pie obsession is ever going to have anything to do with that!” “Yeah, you always say stuff like that,” Soarin said back. “Would you rather have me not?” Spitfire instantly replied with the rhetorical question. Soarin let out another sigh before he responded to his friend a question of his own, one that he also already knew the answer to. “You sure you want fly with me as your wingpony?” he asked with a faint smile. Spitfire took a step closer to him so that her face was practically right in front of his and returned his smile with a much larger one as she answered him, “Come on, how long have we been friends, Soarin? Why would I ever fly with anypony else?” Her words made his smile swell in size until it matched hers perfectly. “It still always makes me feel better to hear that,” he told her. “I know,” she responded, placing her hoof on his shoulder again, “and besides, what would the best flyer in Equestria be without the second best flyer in Equestria?” Soarin laughed for a second at that. “You know just second ago you were saying Fleetfoot was full of herself?” he reminded her. She rolled her eyes before answering with an obvious tone, “what she does IS boasting and being full of herself, because she’s not what she’s always trying to claim to be. All the stuff I’m saying is just telling the truth.” Soarin just kept laughing again after Spitfire had finished. “Really though, there’s nopony out there as reliable as you,” she told him, and waited for him to beg her question on, which he unwittingly did. “Really?” he asked. “Yeah, I don’t any other stallions that’ll keep flying to the ends of Equestria so long as somepony’s dangling a pie in front of them,” she sprung her joke, and Soaring realized at the last instant that he’d walked right into it. Spitfire had her laugh for a moment, and unlike Fleetfoot, she only received a general look of annoyance from her friend. She was even about to make sure she nullified the action she just took, but he beat her to it with something else. “Yeah, sure, but I better get the pie whenever we get where we’re flying,” he said back to her, actually playing to his own joke for once and taking Spitfire almost completely by surprise. Soarin sat pretty smug while he waited for her reaction, which she actual had to recompose herself to produce. “Huh, well since I’ll be Captain: no matter what, even if there’s no bakery around whatsoever, I’ll always pull ever extra string to make sure you get your pie in the end,” she promised the still-smirking stallion. “You sure you can afford that?” he questioned the potential finances of her proclamation. “Hey, I said I’d always pull strings for you, but since I’m the one pulling them that means I’m the one decided how much I do,” she answered, though only to be countered. “Hey yourself. I’m gonna be getting paid too you know?” he reminded her of the obvious, at which all she did was roll her eyes again. “When were you going to get your next one? I’d image it’s pretty hard for you going this whole academy week without getting to eat one,” she moved on around his comment. “Don’t you know it! I had a slice of my aunt’s pumpkin pie just before we flew up here. It was leftover from the family party we had when I got my acceptance letter. I’m hittin that place down in Ponyville for a nice, big apple one first thing after the week’s over with!” he went off right upon her prompting, leaving her laughing by the end of it, like always. In fact it was only hearing her laugh that even made Soarin stop at all. “Fine, it’s on me when we get out,” she promised. “Serious?” he asked with a sudden and gaping mouth. All she did was all Spitfire knew she had to do. She just held her smile and nodded until Soarin believed it. “Ha, alright! Score! This means I get two now!” he yelled out in blind thrill, while she facehoofed herself at his intention to still purchase one with his own bits as well. Spitfire held her face in her hoof for a good moment, not even making a motion to pick her head back up or set her hoof back down. Only when Soarin actually spoke again, and with a voice that sounded more concerned than anything else. “Uh . . . Spitty . . .” he started with her oldest, and formerly humiliating nickname, his eyes wandering one way then the other, picking paths at random to avoid meeting hers, “uh-I know I can really be a lot to put up with; I . . . I kind of just want to say thanks for sticking with me for so long . . ." “Ugh, Soarin . . .” she couldn’t think to finish her sentence, she just resorted to a resigned , pleading expression. Soarin returned a smile, plain and pure. It held no mischief, no provocation, no nervousness, nothing in excess of just the fundamental bliss that resided behind every upside-down frown. And it infected Spitfire, like his cheeriness always had, until she became so stricken that everything else of note left her face as well, and she was left with nothing but the same smile as her oldest, dorkiest, and best friend. Spitfire broke their shared, smiling stare only to look around them really quick, making sure nopony else was around right at that moment. And then without a word she reached out and pulled him into a hug. Soarin’s eyes widened at the suddenness of it, though that died away quickly since he wasn’t really shocked by her hugging him to begin with. They’d hugged each other before, more than plenty of times, though it had been more so when they were younger, and she actually hadn’t hugged him in a long time. He guessed that was why he was blushing as he hugged her back, though he was mainly just glad right at that moment that she couldn’t see it, otherwise he knew she would tease him over it. “I’m not ever gonna leave you behind, Soarin, no matter how far ahead I could get. I promised you when we both first learned learned to fly for the first time, remember?” she reiterated the promise in its exact words, and asked about his memory as she released him and pulled back away. “Hey,” he protested, “that was different back then. I can keep up now!” Spitfire’s smirk sprung back into place at its call to duty, and she said what was only fitting to say back to him, “prove it.” Both raised their wings, and both of them rocketed upwards and away on the same indeterminable signal they read from each other. They went off racing together. Author's Note The introduction to this story of mine that I've been building up in my head for a while. It's basically just a moment's flashback from Soarin and Spitfire's induction to the Wonderbolt Academy. A good bit was inspired by this piece http://inuhoshi-to-darkpen.deviantart.com/art/Back-at-the-Academy-352577906 The story won't be sticking in their academy days, in fact that's kind of why I dubbed it the prologue, it's actually going to jump right up around "present time" as referred to by around when the show takes place. Enjoy, if you want, that is :) For you, the bestA delightful grin clung to Soarin’s face while his mouth salivated over the decent-sized piece of pie he was carrying. It was the last slice of the last pie they’d had at Captain Thunder Trail’s retirement party. While it did leave him with a tiny, tiny sense of guilt for feeling that way about it, he was glad that not all of the party’s food had been enjoyed, since he’d appointed himself in charge of finishing off this particular leftover. In fact, he would have gone ahead and consumed it right then and there before he even left, but a smiling glare from Spitfire had held him back from doing so. His stomach had protested the hold-off pretty fiercely, but the combination of having enough manners to let other ponies have a chance at pie and not wanting to make Spitfire have to start pulling strings for him already, given it hadn’t even been a full two days since her promotion to their new Captain. Though, he had every intention of calling her in on the promise she’d made a long way back, especially since Captain Thunder Trail had been giving Soarin a hard time for eating so much pie so often, constantly telling him “I expect a tail trail, not stomach plummet!” The last time their now-former captain had said that was after he’d already announced Spitfire as the Wonderbolts’ new captain, and of course, Spitfire had indicated Soarin and promised the captain she’d keep his flight exercise regimen more than sufficient enough to keep off any pie-weight. Soarin couldn’t help but smile as he laughed inside at that particular memory. It was undoubtedly true; when Spitfire was in charge of team workouts and flight-exercises she made thoroughly sure they were nothing short of exhausting. His best friend wasn’t satisfied if she wasn’t pushing limits, and she didn’t restrict that attitude to just herself. She always pushed everypony . . . and she’d been pushing him since they first became friends: through flight school, summer flight camp, their training before they applied to the Wonderbolts, their initial training and regimenting after they’d officially joined, always. Whenever he’d thought he was too slow or too sky-clutzy or even “not cool enough” she’d always been right there pushing forward and nudging him on. AND, whenever he was just being lazy she was there to boot him in the flank as well, which anypony who knew Soarin knew he needed regularly. Spitfire was going to be an amazing Captain, Soarin wholeheartedly believed that just as much he did that he would never have made to where they’d come to now if she hadn’t been behind him. Right after that belief he so strongly held came to mind, a thought followed in its wake that brought him to a stop. It left him staring down longingly at his big slice of pie, and for a good ten seconds too. But, eventually he made a slow turn with his head to look off to his left side. His eyes trained onto the cloud building a short distance off from him; it was Spitfire’s dormitory unit, along with her new office joint to it. Soarin’s eyelids fell part way as he looked on at his friend’s new residence. He turned his head back to his pie for a few more seconds and then let out a weak sigh through his nose, returning to a mild form of his dorky smile after he did. Soarin detoured from his former path and instead walked toward Spitfire’s single dorm. The walk wasn’t long, so it was little more than a minute before he was at the door. The thought that she might not be there only ran through his mind for a couple seconds once he actually reached the door. He hadn’t seen her at the party at the time that he left, so he’d assumed she’d already gone. So, he went ahead and knocked. A minute passed without an answer, so he tried again, but with fewer knocks and a choice of words as well. “Uh-hey, Spitfire, it’s me. I . . . was wonderin if you felt like hanging out at all?” he spoke out to the clouds in front of him, though even after another moment there was still nothing. A deal of disappointment did show on his face, but his gaze falling downward from such only served to land it upon his slice of pie again. His sight reached his stomach and his guiding organ started trying to tell him what to do, as it was well used to. But Soarin had another intention that sprung up right there and then. He reached a hoof out to Spitfire’s door; he knew that her living in a set of Captain’s quarters was definitively different than just in a room in the regular Wonderbolts’ dormitory, but on the other hoof he also knew that old habits died hard and he pushed the cloud door open without resistance, finding it unlocked as he could only have expected from her. He knelt down to just place the plate with his slice of pie just inside her doorway for her to find later, but he stopped reaching down when light coming from inside around the corner caught his eye. Spitfire was there, and assumedly awake. The realization kept Soarin’s head just off the ground for an extended moment while a decision worked itself out in his mind. It ended with him picking his head all the way back up and stepping inside. “Spitfire?” he asked aloud once he was in, hoping to at least make sure to alert her to his presence. He pushed her door closed with his back leg and walked around the corner into the short hallway, looking around as he went, not having been in the small building all that often while it had still been Captain Thunder Trail’s quarters. The door directly at the end was open to what clearly his friend’s new bedroom, although to Soarin’s surprise that wasn’t where the light was coming from; it was actually coming out of the only other open door. Soarin even began to question whether Spitfire was actually there again as he didn’t hear anything at all while walking down the length of the hallway. When he finally reached that open doorway, however, Soarin found the reason for that: there was his best friend, his oldest friend, crashed asleep with her face planted down right in the center of her form and paperwork-strewn desk. The blue stallion only spent a single second in a state of surprise before his face just jumped straight into a sympathetic look. Though she had never literally fallen asleep on a desk in the middle of filling out any kind of papers before, it was far from the first time Soarin had seen Spitfire in a state somewhat like this. She’d always pushed everypony, especially Soarin, though she did herself more so than anypony else, and somehow it always ended up with her vastly overworking herself every so often. Soarin sighed nasally and stepped up to the desk, setting his plate and accompanying slice of pie down on the clearest space he could find. The movement so near to her apparently held more waking power over Spitfire than Soarin’s own voice had, as the mare began to open up her eyes right after Soarin had set the plate down. “. . . h-uh . . . huh-gh, Soarin?” she took full four seconds to force out her one word, one name question, not coming smoothly out of unconsciousness. “Huh? Ah-yeah, it’s me,” he answered his groggy friend with a dorky smile. Spitfire made an attempt to lift her head off of its resting place on the desk in front of her, but only wound up partly successful, picking it up by no more than a hoof. “hmh, what are you doing here?” she asked him, only just getting volume into her voice right as she finished. She blinked continuously while waiting for him to respond, trying somewhat to wake herself up. Soarin tossed one of his front hooves back behind his head, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head and neck every few seconds. “Uh, I was kind of hoping you’d be around, and . . . uh, awake,” he answered her and watching her facial response right after he did. Spitfire rolled her eyes a quarter of the way, but then just let them drop into looking straight down, something Soarin had seen more than once before. He knew it was her way of rolling her eyes at herself, “Ah-I even brought the last slice of pie,” he spoke up again, removing his hoof from behind his head to indicate the delicious baked apple goodness, “I waited for everypony else to get some, I promise, but nopony wanted the last slice, so I figured it was mine. But when I was heading back to the dorm, I passed by and . . . kind of felt like hanging out with you for a while,” he stopped for a moment again, long enough for her to come around into some form of being fully conscious, and to sit the rest of the way up and return a very groggy version of her friend’s sincere smile. “And,” Soarin began to go on once more, “I figured I should let you get the slice, since it’s your promotion, and you didn’t get eat any at the Captain’s retirement party.” At that one Spitfire managed to raise her eyebrows even in her exhausted state. “Hey,” he assured her, “I had my eyes on that pastry table the whole night, trust me, I know who ate pie and who didn’t.” Soarin held the proudest smile Spitfire had seen from him in a long time, and he kept it up . . . until she let her face fall straight down into the desk. At that his smile broke and his expression almost instantly shifted into displaying concern, until Spitfire began picking her head back up again, and Soarin saw that she was laughing. “You never change,” she told him right as she brought her eyes back into contact with his. “H’yeah, growing up’s boring anyways,” Soarin agreed with her, which only served to further her amusement, resulting in an actual full bout of laughter from the golden mare. She sighed once she calmed down, and shook her head a few times before she said anything back. “Well, I could probably use you here to make sure I don’t pass out again,” she offered the opportunity for him to stick around, for which she received his unmistakeable dorky, but happy smile. “Will do,” he responded with a nonchalant salute. “And,” she added on the instant he’d finished his two words, “since you’re going to be here, would you mind making me some coffee?” *** Soarin’s eyes opened fully with anticipation as he came to the open doorway of Spitfire’s office with the cup of coffee he’d made for her, Right as he stepped into her office again, though, his eyelids relaxed again out of his relief at finding her still awake. She was holding her head between her hooves and staring with a hollow gaze down at the mess of signed, unsigned, complete and incomplete forms strewn across her desk. Her head didn’t even move until Soarin had practically stepped right up to the desk. “Here,” Soarin said with a sympathetic smile as he put down the coffee and slid it to her side of the desk, “you definitely need it.” Spitfire’s eyes opened up a good way as she took a few sniffs of the coffee aroma rising up from the cup, and after a moment she finally grabbed ahold of it took her first few sips. Soarin took a seat himself, sitting over at the corner of her desk, making sure he would be mostly out of her way. “Hey,” she suddenly said, regaining his attention, “you know, since you were so nice you wanted to give it to me, and since I know you were hoping for a second piece all night, you go ahead have it,” she offered, pushing the plate he’d brought with the last slice of pie over to him. “You serious?” he asked with utter delight. She just nodded. “Alright!” his dorkiness prevailed in his voice as he nearly shouted. His volume made her flinch for a second, and then him cringe at his making her flinch. “I’m still barely awake, remember,” she reminded him before lifting her cup for a few more sips of coffee. “H’yeah, sorry about that . . .” he said, slightly red under his fur. Soarin ate away while Spitfire sighed and picked up her quill with her mouth to begin filling out and signing forms once more. Soarin did occasionally glance at all the paper sheets before the tired mare, noticing what he’d mostly already suspected: they were collectively a single giant mess all having to do with her assuming the position as The Wonderbolts’ new Captain, though it made no sense to him why there was so much of it. Spitfire nearly drifted off a few more times, and Soarin had to keep nudging her with her own coffee cup to snap her out of it before she actually fell asleep. Ironically though, he actually spent a majority of the time insisting that she should just go to bed, which she refused to do until every last paper had been filled out and signed. When she actually came to the very last form, Spitfire began to lose consciousness yet again, but instead of this time just snapping her back to, Soarin decided to just dart his head in quickly and sign the final line for her. “Hwhuh?” she mumbled as caught him, barely withholding herself from passing out like she had seemed about to. “Uh . . . just finishing that off for you since you looked like you were heading for a crash-landing again. Don’t worry, I’m sure it matches yours perfectly by now, I mean it’s not like I’ve been doing anything but watching you sign stuff all night anyways,” Soarin explain with such passive smile that Spitfire just let her head fall back onto the desk again. “You know you could get permanently discharged from the team for forging your superior officer’s signature, right?” she teased the threat, though his easy expression stayed unchanged. “H’yeah that COULD happen, buuutt I kind of suspect my superior officer wasn’t all that wide awake when she was signing her forms, so I wouldn’t be too sure about her claiming she SAW one of her subordinates forging her signature,” he playfully worded her back into a corner, and then saw from the faint convulsions her upper body went through that she was laughing as much as she still had the waking energy to. After a quiet moment, Spitfire began aimlessly flapping her wing in Soarin’s general direction without once picking up her head from the desk. “Go on,” she struggled to say above a mumble, “that’s everything . . .” Her wing stilled and drooped back down weakly onto the desk beside her resting head, and she began to drift off completely into sleep without Soarin snapping her too that time. Soarin remained for a minute longer, looking down at his passed-out friend, and picked up a hoof to begin turning around . . . but he never made it that far. He woke her again, this time as he slid his head and neck under her just behind her forelegs and lifted her up. “Come on,” he said in soft, but still encouraging voice, despite the fact that it was him who was moving. “Wha-hgh . . . hm—” she produced indiscernible, exhausted sounds, but nothing else. “Yeah—naw, I wasn’t about to leave you like that,” he told her as he carried her out and around the corner into her room, finally tipping himself to set her down on her own bed when they got there. Just as he was about to lean back away from setting her down, Soarin suddenly felt Spitfire’s hooves wrap around his neck more snugly and with more strength than her tired state should have allowed. He froze in the moment and held still. It was a hug . . . the first in so long too, the last full and real one being the day they’d been teamed together at the academy . . . “You’re always the best, Pie Head,” she said to him barely over a whisper; the use of her forelegs to hug him had left little strength for her voice. Soarin laughed, mouth closed. Were it anypony else he’d have taken the insult as . . . just that, an insult. But, from her he laughed and smiled, and then he hugged her back for the few seconds he thought she could still remain awake. “Only for you,” he said back just before he let her go and gently pushed her off until she’d lied completely down on her mattress. “Good night Spitty,” he said as he finally turned and left. And as he had with his, she smiled, eyes still closed, at his calling her by her oldest tease. Author's Note Finally, I've posted something up again. I'm so horribly sorry for all my delay-extensions. I'll probably try to explain everything in my next blog post, but for now, everypony have chapter 2 of this. It's a jump several years after the last chapter, to when Spitfire makes Captain. Better than a Best FriendA line of fresh cadets stood in a poorly-organized line on the Wonderbolt Academy grounds. All of them had already been there nearly five minutes, since just after the sun had risen, but they still hadn’t seen any sign of an actual uniformed Wonderbolt, whom they would likely assume to be their instructor for the week. “Aaat attention!” all of them heard an awkward-sounding voice shout suddenly from nearby. Lo and behold, it belonged to Soarin, who was just trotting up in front of them. He took a second to wipe away some food that was still on his face right as he stopped in front of them all, and then focused on the haphazard row of young pegasi. The surprise at hearing a voice finally yell out from behind them had sprung them to attention, but they still held their poor form. “Aahh—alright! Today we’re gonna start you all off with some pretty eas—I mean basic exercises, and we’re gonna crank up the intensity as we go and see how you do. The first day here is mostly about testing you to see what you can take,” Soarin tried his absolute best drilling the cadets in front of him, even though it came out as nothing like it, and he knew it. “So? Does everypony get it?” He had to ask a few seconds afterward, just to prompt a reaction from the semi-hapless recruits. “Yes Sir,” – “Yes Sir!” – “Y-yes ! . . . Sir!” They all said apart, not one by one, but horribly spread out enough. “Uh, alright, then everypony go on and head out to the flight course!” Soarin ordered them after they had all responded. The group all looked around at each other in apparent confusion, and then all around in general, until Soarin suddenly was hit the realization that he’d failed to indicate an actual direction to where they were going. Quickly he threw out a hoof towards the aerial rings where he intended them to gather, and internally cringed with embarrassment as he just awkwardly waited for them all to notice over the next few seconds. “Hey! Ahuh—get moving! What do you think we have all day?” he attempted to chastise the group for their initial slow movement, though it came about as well-put as his regular drilling. They did quickly pick up their pace in response, but following behind them, Soarin had turned what little disciplinary side he had back in on himself. Seriously? “What do you think we have all day?” You’re supposed the one telling THEM, not asking them. Soarin sighed as he though on. Come on, Stupid Soarin; Spitfire would’ve had them all in line by now. Pfth! Oh yeah, she’d of had them well in line in the first five seconds. Five seconds was certainly not how long it took Soarin to get the cadets properly regimented. In fact it wasn’t even until the afternoon that he even had them what might have been acceptable as half way. They got yes sir and no sir down just fine, they’d long since ceased hesitating to move when directed, and none of them were really struggling with the aerial exercises and relay team-building practices, but there was still a lot lacking: they still talked and whispered amongst each other so long as they weren’t the particular section of the group he was addressing directly at the moment, and they were nowhere near being anything of a cohesive unit in the sky. They even still had difficulties functioning well in just pairs! “Ah-uhHEY! Whatta you think you’re doing?” Soarin suddenly had to shout at one of the cadets as he saw the stallion clearly using the wind from his flight drag to blow a large portion of the countless clouds set up for them to buck just out of view behind a large cumulus. Even though he’d never drilled any cadets before, it was still obvious enough to Soarin that this one was trying to get around having to do as much work as possible. He knew for sure there was no way Spitfire would have that, so he wasn’t about to either. “Hey! I said get back here!” Soarin yelled out again, flinching inside at just how dorky and un-intimidating his voice really sounded. The young cadet stallion turned about in mid-air as some others flew by behind him. He held a confused look, or so he made his face appear, trying to look as if he’d either just heard or barely heard Soarin. “Huh? Yes Sir?” the younger stallion addressed Soarin, coming down and landing into a trot. “And what exactly was that?” Soarin attempted . . . if that was even an appropriate word, to interrogate the cadet, throwing a hoof up to indicate the large cloud the cadet had hidden most of his assignment behind. The cadet turned sharply and looked up at the larger cumulus hanging relatively in place. “Uum . . .” he began, intentionally drifting his voice off as he pretended, via actually doing so, to study the cloud intensely. “A cumulus, Sir,” he told Soarin, “type . . . uh, 2-B, Sir.” He was right in his cloud typology, though obviously Soarin didn’t care. “Ah—oh no, I think you and I both know what I mean!” Soarin tried again, but still with none of the effect whatsoever that he knew Spitfire would have produced. “I SAW you hide those cloud-smashing exercises behind that cloud!” In a blindside to Soarin, the cadet suddenly snapped after rolling his eyes through Soarin’s words. “Ugh, come on! Seriously, this is all just a waste of time. What’s the point of making us all do so much mindless stuff like this instead actually training us to do stunts aerial maneuvers?” “The point is to get you used to falling in-line,” the most familiar, and at that moment relieving voice Soarin knew suddenly responded to what the cadet had asked. Soarin flung his head over his shoulder relieved, but still surprised to actually see Spitfire approaching the two of them. “The point of all this is to get you into the routine of putting in HARD WORK and DEDICATION, pouring your maximum effort into things. You’re not being trained to do anything, you’re in an academy; you are NOT in ANY way part of the actual Wonderbolts. This whole set up acts as first-pass test for us to see who’s really willing to put all of themselves into everything they do and who’s not.” Spitfire stopped for only brief instant after letting the cadet know full well what the purpose of everything at the academy was. She stopped, but only long enough to make a single decision. “So get out,” her words were so toneless and blunt that they practically just slid right off of the cadet without effect, though apparently they crawled back and found their way inside of his ears as he did eventually regain his speech after a moment of just standing dumbfounded. “W-wha—wait, what?” the cadet asked back in quickening alarm. “You heard me; I said get out,” Spitfire repeated herself just as coldly as the first time. The cadet was frozen in place again, but for half the length of time before he suddenly started panicking. “What? No! You can’t just do that!” “Hm, I’m the captain of the Wonderbolts, and this is a below-entry-level academy for attempting to be considered for the CHANCE to actually join the Wonderbolts: you’re not exactly in any position to dispute me,” Spitfire responded without once breaking eye contact. *** “Agh, I’m really sorry for messing all this up so badly today . . .” Soarin told Spitfire after she’d dismissed the cadets at the end of the afternoon. He didn’t hang his head completely, though it still sunk down half way. At least, until he felt a hoof placed on him. It was Spitfire’s of course; they were alone on the flat top of the academy’s island, so it wouldn’t have been anypony else. “Soarin . . .” Spitfire held her mouth open to say more for a few seconds, but she just ended up releasing a sigh instead. She shut her eyes for a second as she took her hoof back off of him. “You’re too nice for this,” she said, actually catching him completely off-guard, “don’t look down on yourself for this, I shouldn’t have let you fill in the position for me.” “Wait, what? What do you mean too nice? It’s just that . . . I can’t really yell and scream and all that kinda stuff without it soundin . . . agh, you know,” Soarin responded, reaching a hoof around behind his head. “Yeah,” she answered him with a sympathetic smile, “that’s exactly what I mean. It doesn’t have anything to do with how dorky your voice sounds. You know exactly what listening to Fleetfoot’s lisp is like, but she’s still intimidating to cadets. You don’t come off like whenever you try because you’ve never really been like that anyways.” She stopped for a second but just saw that he still looked confused by some little bit, so she went ahead with explaining herself. “You never yell. Actually, I’m pretty sure you getting prickly that one time Fleetfoot called you Pie Brain back when we were at the academy ourselves was the maddest I’ve ever seen you, and I couldn’t even call that all that much more than grumpy. Most of the time you’re just always happy, or at least you’ve sounded like it for the past fifteen years. I mean, you’re not always smiling, you do kind of tend to look confused about stuff almost as often,” she paused just to enjoy his brief, unamused facial reaction to that particular comment, but she quickly kept going, “but . . . you’re just not an intimidating kind of pony.” Soarin was left both feeling and looking embarrassed by the ending conclusion, despite that obviously not being his best friend’s intention. He sighed, “h’yeah . . . I guess I kinda really should know that much more than anypony, but . . .” Something rare, extremely rare for her: a glimmer a worry crossed over Spitfire’s eyes, after her best friend failed to speak any farther and just looked down and away in a slumped silence. Her face dropped out of the smile she’d had and changed into expressing her rising concern. Right as she went to raise a hoof to him again, though, Soarin spoke. “I know you told me I’m amazing up there in the sky back when we were here at the academy, but we all are, or else we wouldn’t even be in the Wonderbolts. We’re all the same in that. But then, you can take charge easily, Fleetfoot can drill just as good as you when you’re too busy, Rapidfire’s the most charismatic stallion anypony’s ever seen and’s practically our poster face, everypony loves Surprise, Misty Fly and Fire Streak both have medical training . . . so what’s my thing? There’s nothing REALLY special about me; I fly good like everypony else, but sides that all anypony knows me for is just . . . eating a bunch of pies.” Soarin looked utterly miserable by the time he’d finished, to the point of Spitfire not having any immediate reaction to everything he’d just said. It took her a moment to really think, and in reality, to feel the self-downing Soarin had just let out. She knew. She knew what he was, what his thing was, at least that she knew him for, but she didn’t know entirely how to make it sound right for the way he was feeling right now. So before she even said anything back to him, she stepped forward and hugged him. The fact of just how long it had been since the last time, not to exclude also the fact that she had to physically lift his head up for him so she even could hug him in the first place, left Soarin more surprised right then than anything. “You’re a friend, Soarin . . . you’re my friend, my real friend . . . and more than I really deserved a lot of the time, with some of the ways I’ve been like. Best friends are always there when you need them, but you’ve just always been there period,” she paused her speech for a second realizing how much more true what she was saying was than she could even make it sound. She pressed the side of her neck against his while she still held on hugging him. “You’re better than a best friend. You’ve always been, right from the start. I’m sorry if I’ve really never let you know that much.” Spitfire let go of him as she let out her last sentence, revealing Soarin to have eyes enlarged and mouth a portion open in a visible mixture of shock and taking in. “I know . . . we’ve been together since the beginning, but . . . am I really THAT much? Any friend’s a friend,” Soarin asked and said quietly, almost calmly trying to protest. It was practically reflexive: the smile the came to Spitfire’s face during her response to him. “Soarin,” she said at first, shaking her head with the warm smile that had come over it, “no, you’re way above and beyond that. You’ve always been there, ALWAYS . . . pie or no pie involved.” For once, that jab actually did create a smile on Soarin’s face, though Spitfire just went on. “You’re always the one trying to cheer me up, AND the one looking over to make sure I’m still going. I would’ve crashed and burned so hard all those times I was pushing myself if you hadn’t been around. And then that’s just it: you’re not there when I ask or anywhere near it . . . you’re always just already there anyways.” Soarin just stared back for a moment, everything draining its way in until he looked down thinking over it all. That was interrupted though, when he suddenly felt Spitfire’s cheek brush and press against his. That shot him red, with no initial assumption of how to interpret it. “Soarin . . .” she said through a sigh, and he could feel her shaking her head by just the tiniest bit. The way she said his name let him know enough that his downing himself was starting to get to her; he’d heard it before. So . . . he stopped, for her sake, and out of the trust between them he believed everything she’d said. He leaned against her cheek with his own, just as she’d been doing. She really was right . . . even from the beginning, neither one of them would have gone anywhere if it weren’t for the other. “. . . thanks Spitty . . .” “Here,” she began a suggestion after she quickly pulled away, “I’ll take over the academy drilling. How about you go do all the paperwork that was keeping me from doing it?” she proposed the idea, to his head-retracting surprise. Soarin began to sound just a bit iffy about the idea, “Ahhh-are you sure that’s a good idea—” “You know how to forge my signature,” she cut him off, throwing on a friendly grin as well as she did. Soarin’s eyes darted to the side once while his face reddened a little bit, but he managed to return everything to normal. “You still do, right?” Spitfire asked, just to be sure. Soarin’s face had returned to its normal sky-blue, though he still had an embarrassed smile as he responded to his friend, “Uhh, yeah, ahh-I could probably still pull it off.” Spitfire’s smile grew at Soarin’s answer, and for a moment she just let him soak in it . . . he really needed to, she felt. She waited for him as long as it took for him to come to a true smile of his own, and even after he had she still held hers at him for a half-moment after before she began to step past. “You know my door code,” she said as she began to pass him. Soarin stood still for the first second she passed by, but even as he lifted a hoof to step away himself, he felt her brush against his side one more time Author's Note Finally, here's something at least. I'm really, horribly sorry to everyone that I couldn't get something up sooner. I won't go into how much classtime, course work, lab time and lab work I have this semester like I did last. It's 3:31 AM right now (Alaska Time)_(yes, for those who didn't already know, I live in Fairbanks, Alaska, and accordingly attend the University of Alaska), and I stayed up to finish this and upload it, and I also finished editing half of another chapter of Hurricane Paradigm which I should have no problem getting up by tomorrow. Then I have the weekend free to hopefully resume writing chapter 5 of Drug Dust. AND I'm really, really sorry to those few ( 2, I think) of you who consistently comment on things and try to talk to me. I absolutely promise the next communication attempt you make with me, I WILL respond. Nothing else I really can think of to even put in here given what hour it is. I'll pray you all have been enduring only good events the past few months, then I'm passing out till noon.
Prologue: Dangling a PieThe frown that was strewn across the blue Pegasus’s face was absolutely huge, and his head hung level with his back. His eyes too added to his look in that moment, narrowed half-way open, but being so from his eyebrows pressing downward instead of from any saddened weight to his eyelids. It was annoyance, annoyance and aggravation, and the whole of that expression was even cast in shadow as a bright yellow wing stretched out just above him and began patting him on the head. “Awww, come on Soarin! Nopony wants to be a wingpony but at least they made US a team!” the flaring yellow Pegasus mare that the wing belonged to prodded the pouting stallion with words, to which he gave no response other than an exhale through his nose that was just loud enough to be heard. “Aren’t you even happy that we got paired up together?” she asked further, finally retracting her wing back to her side and stepping forth from her place beside him to face him more directly. “It’s not that; I didn’t think they would with how everypony knows they don’t like putting friends together, so yeah I was kinda hoping they would make me a lead pony since I thought there was no way we'd be paired up anyway.” Soarin finally spoke up and answered his friend. “Well yeah, I wasn’t seriously expecting them to put us together either, but come on! Us two as a team? This is gonna be the best!” She kept on with her attempts at rousing Soarin out of his moping state. Though she was soon interrupted by a fellow cadet with an unmistakable lisp to her speech. “Don’t go getting too far ahead of yourself, Spitfire. One good flying audition doesn’t prove anything!” A blue Pegasus with a cloud-white mane mocked Spitfire, though doing so with a friendly smirk. “Well well, if isn’t Footsie.” Spitfire said back in the same tone, the mention of the name drawing a scowl out from the other mare. “So? Who’s wingpony’d they make you?” Spitfire added on the inquiry. “Hah, hah, funny funny, Spitty!” The blue mare shot back with a nick of her own, and went to correct Spitfire, “for your information: I’M the leadpony.” She in no way withheld herself from a using a boastful tone and ending by wearing a grin to match it. Her grin vanished though, the instant Spitfire just started laughing. “Wow, Fleetfoot as a leadpony? Haha-who’s got enough bad luck to be stuck as YOUR wingpony?” the yellow mare teased the question to her friend, who just glared back at her for a good few seconds before she retaliated with anything. “Hmpf! Hey Rapidfire! Get over here!” Fleetfoot shouted off over her shoulder, resulting in a Pegasus stallion galloping up next to her a few seconds later. He skidded hard to a halt to stand perfectly right beside her and even threw himself into the statuesque seated pose Wonderbolt posters always displayed the team members in. It drew an approving smirk from Fleetfoot, and even mildly impressed looks from Soarin and Spitfire. “You need me, Fleets?” the new stallion asked eagerly, turning to his leadpony just in time to receive a restrained hoof-jab to his mouth. “There’s a FOOT after that, and there is definitely no S after the T!” she scolded him from an eager smile into a nervous one. “Ah-right, eh-sorry Fleetfoot,” Rapidfire made his stammering apology while timidly lifting one hoof from the ground and gently touching it to the dirt every few seconds. “That’s better!” Fleetfoot approved before she spun back to Spitfire again. “See?” she asked, grabbing Rapidfire with one foreleg over his shoulder as she did, “MY wingpony’s actually excited about being paired up with me!" Rapidfire very visibly blushed both as Fleetfoot threw her foreleg over his shoulder and more so right after as she spoke about his attitude towards being partnered with her. “Unlike SOMEPONY’s sulking teammate,” Fleet foot added her last mocking bit to her bout of speaking. “Hey!” Soarin suddenly said back to her before Spitfire even could, “I am not sulking, or moping, or pouting! I was just expecting to me made somepony else’s leadpony. I have NO gripes about being her wingpony!” he declared, standing up and point a hoof at Spitfire as he referred to her. “Sorry, duly noted, Pie Face,” Fleetfoot ended in an irresitable snicker that Rapidfire joined briefly and Spitfire wasn’t even able to keep from contributing two laughs to. All Soarin did was glare, hard, with narrowed eyes and without even glaring at anypony in particular. Spitfire stopped herself quick and directed a dismissive look at Fleetfoot as she told her, “Yeah, yeah, Footsie, why don’t you and your little yes-stallion get going and go get some practice in instead of running your mouth?” Rapidfire’s face turned even more red, even as Fleetfoot released him in a shove. “Ha! Sure, whatever you say, our self-proclaimed future captain. See you on the aerial obstacle course,” she casted her last words at Spitfire before she took off with Rapidfire immediately flying after her. Spitfire waited for a few seconds until the other pair was definitely long gone, then she looked over at Soarin once they were alone. His glare had let up a bit, but not by much. She let her eyelids come down a ways, and put on a light smile as she placed a hoof on his shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry for laughing with them about that; I can’t help that one sometimes, but I know that stuff still gets to you,” she made sure to be thorough in her apology. It was enough to get an exasperated sigh out of the stallion with the notoriously awkward voice, and to result in him finally picking his head back up after. “Listen, Soarin, just forget about it. Fleetfoot just like to egg at other ponies and we both know she’s her own share of full of herself. But about this wingpony and leadpony stuff, just listen,” Spitfire went talking to him with a much more gentle voice than most ponies were used to hearing from her and waiting until Soarin met her gaze to keep going with what she wanted to say, “I get that it’s probably really upsetting not to get picked for leadpony, but I’ll tell you something right now.” All Soarin did was make a noise, barely anything more than a grunt, just enough for Spitfire to decide he meant for her to go on. “I know for fact that you’re only a wingpony because you got paired up with me, and I refuse to believe anything else. Yeah, you’re pretty clueless sometimes, and you’re kind of a dork,” she still kept going, only pausing for a second when he gave her a look at being called that, “but out there’s totally different. Out there in the sky, you’re something else, and no weird voice or stupid pie obsession is ever going to have anything to do with that!” “Yeah, you always say stuff like that,” Soarin said back. “Would you rather have me not?” Spitfire instantly replied with the rhetorical question. Soarin let out another sigh before he responded to his friend a question of his own, one that he also already knew the answer to. “You sure you want fly with me as your wingpony?” he asked with a faint smile. Spitfire took a step closer to him so that her face was practically right in front of his and returned his smile with a much larger one as she answered him, “Come on, how long have we been friends, Soarin? Why would I ever fly with anypony else?” Her words made his smile swell in size until it matched hers perfectly. “It still always makes me feel better to hear that,” he told her. “I know,” she responded, placing her hoof on his shoulder again, “and besides, what would the best flyer in Equestria be without the second best flyer in Equestria?” Soarin laughed for a second at that. “You know just second ago you were saying Fleetfoot was full of herself?” he reminded her. She rolled her eyes before answering with an obvious tone, “what she does IS boasting and being full of herself, because she’s not what she’s always trying to claim to be. All the stuff I’m saying is just telling the truth.” Soarin just kept laughing again after Spitfire had finished. “Really though, there’s nopony out there as reliable as you,” she told him, and waited for him to beg her question on, which he unwittingly did. “Really?” he asked. “Yeah, I don’t any other stallions that’ll keep flying to the ends of Equestria so long as somepony’s dangling a pie in front of them,” she sprung her joke, and Soaring realized at the last instant that he’d walked right into it. Spitfire had her laugh for a moment, and unlike Fleetfoot, she only received a general look of annoyance from her friend. She was even about to make sure she nullified the action she just took, but he beat her to it with something else. “Yeah, sure, but I better get the pie whenever we get where we’re flying,” he said back to her, actually playing to his own joke for once and taking Spitfire almost completely by surprise. Soarin sat pretty smug while he waited for her reaction, which she actual had to recompose herself to produce. “Huh, well since I’ll be Captain: no matter what, even if there’s no bakery around whatsoever, I’ll always pull ever extra string to make sure you get your pie in the end,” she promised the still-smirking stallion. “You sure you can afford that?” he questioned the potential finances of her proclamation. “Hey, I said I’d always pull strings for you, but since I’m the one pulling them that means I’m the one decided how much I do,” she answered, though only to be countered. “Hey yourself. I’m gonna be getting paid too you know?” he reminded her of the obvious, at which all she did was roll her eyes again. “When were you going to get your next one? I’d image it’s pretty hard for you going this whole academy week without getting to eat one,” she moved on around his comment. “Don’t you know it! I had a slice of my aunt’s pumpkin pie just before we flew up here. It was leftover from the family party we had when I got my acceptance letter. I’m hittin that place down in Ponyville for a nice, big apple one first thing after the week’s over with!” he went off right upon her prompting, leaving her laughing by the end of it, like always. In fact it was only hearing her laugh that even made Soarin stop at all. “Fine, it’s on me when we get out,” she promised. “Serious?” he asked with a sudden and gaping mouth. All she did was all Spitfire knew she had to do. She just held her smile and nodded until Soarin believed it. “Ha, alright! Score! This means I get two now!” he yelled out in blind thrill, while she facehoofed herself at his intention to still purchase one with his own bits as well. Spitfire held her face in her hoof for a good moment, not even making a motion to pick her head back up or set her hoof back down. Only when Soarin actually spoke again, and with a voice that sounded more concerned than anything else. “Uh . . . Spitty . . .” he started with her oldest, and formerly humiliating nickname, his eyes wandering one way then the other, picking paths at random to avoid meeting hers, “uh-I know I can really be a lot to put up with; I . . . I kind of just want to say thanks for sticking with me for so long . . ." “Ugh, Soarin . . .” she couldn’t think to finish her sentence, she just resorted to a resigned , pleading expression. Soarin returned a smile, plain and pure. It held no mischief, no provocation, no nervousness, nothing in excess of just the fundamental bliss that resided behind every upside-down frown. And it infected Spitfire, like his cheeriness always had, until she became so stricken that everything else of note left her face as well, and she was left with nothing but the same smile as her oldest, dorkiest, and best friend. Spitfire broke their shared, smiling stare only to look around them really quick, making sure nopony else was around right at that moment. And then without a word she reached out and pulled him into a hug. Soarin’s eyes widened at the suddenness of it, though that died away quickly since he wasn’t really shocked by her hugging him to begin with. They’d hugged each other before, more than plenty of times, though it had been more so when they were younger, and she actually hadn’t hugged him in a long time. He guessed that was why he was blushing as he hugged her back, though he was mainly just glad right at that moment that she couldn’t see it, otherwise he knew she would tease him over it. “I’m not ever gonna leave you behind, Soarin, no matter how far ahead I could get. I promised you when we both first learned learned to fly for the first time, remember?” she reiterated the promise in its exact words, and asked about his memory as she released him and pulled back away. “Hey,” he protested, “that was different back then. I can keep up now!” Spitfire’s smirk sprung back into place at its call to duty, and she said what was only fitting to say back to him, “prove it.” Both raised their wings, and both of them rocketed upwards and away on the same indeterminable signal they read from each other. They went off racing together. Author's Note The introduction to this story of mine that I've been building up in my head for a while. It's basically just a moment's flashback from Soarin and Spitfire's induction to the Wonderbolt Academy. A good bit was inspired by this piece http://inuhoshi-to-darkpen.deviantart.com/art/Back-at-the-Academy-352577906 The story won't be sticking in their academy days, in fact that's kind of why I dubbed it the prologue, it's actually going to jump right up around "present time" as referred to by around when the show takes place. Enjoy, if you want, that is :)
For you, the bestA delightful grin clung to Soarin’s face while his mouth salivated over the decent-sized piece of pie he was carrying. It was the last slice of the last pie they’d had at Captain Thunder Trail’s retirement party. While it did leave him with a tiny, tiny sense of guilt for feeling that way about it, he was glad that not all of the party’s food had been enjoyed, since he’d appointed himself in charge of finishing off this particular leftover. In fact, he would have gone ahead and consumed it right then and there before he even left, but a smiling glare from Spitfire had held him back from doing so. His stomach had protested the hold-off pretty fiercely, but the combination of having enough manners to let other ponies have a chance at pie and not wanting to make Spitfire have to start pulling strings for him already, given it hadn’t even been a full two days since her promotion to their new Captain. Though, he had every intention of calling her in on the promise she’d made a long way back, especially since Captain Thunder Trail had been giving Soarin a hard time for eating so much pie so often, constantly telling him “I expect a tail trail, not stomach plummet!” The last time their now-former captain had said that was after he’d already announced Spitfire as the Wonderbolts’ new captain, and of course, Spitfire had indicated Soarin and promised the captain she’d keep his flight exercise regimen more than sufficient enough to keep off any pie-weight. Soarin couldn’t help but smile as he laughed inside at that particular memory. It was undoubtedly true; when Spitfire was in charge of team workouts and flight-exercises she made thoroughly sure they were nothing short of exhausting. His best friend wasn’t satisfied if she wasn’t pushing limits, and she didn’t restrict that attitude to just herself. She always pushed everypony . . . and she’d been pushing him since they first became friends: through flight school, summer flight camp, their training before they applied to the Wonderbolts, their initial training and regimenting after they’d officially joined, always. Whenever he’d thought he was too slow or too sky-clutzy or even “not cool enough” she’d always been right there pushing forward and nudging him on. AND, whenever he was just being lazy she was there to boot him in the flank as well, which anypony who knew Soarin knew he needed regularly. Spitfire was going to be an amazing Captain, Soarin wholeheartedly believed that just as much he did that he would never have made to where they’d come to now if she hadn’t been behind him. Right after that belief he so strongly held came to mind, a thought followed in its wake that brought him to a stop. It left him staring down longingly at his big slice of pie, and for a good ten seconds too. But, eventually he made a slow turn with his head to look off to his left side. His eyes trained onto the cloud building a short distance off from him; it was Spitfire’s dormitory unit, along with her new office joint to it. Soarin’s eyelids fell part way as he looked on at his friend’s new residence. He turned his head back to his pie for a few more seconds and then let out a weak sigh through his nose, returning to a mild form of his dorky smile after he did. Soarin detoured from his former path and instead walked toward Spitfire’s single dorm. The walk wasn’t long, so it was little more than a minute before he was at the door. The thought that she might not be there only ran through his mind for a couple seconds once he actually reached the door. He hadn’t seen her at the party at the time that he left, so he’d assumed she’d already gone. So, he went ahead and knocked. A minute passed without an answer, so he tried again, but with fewer knocks and a choice of words as well. “Uh-hey, Spitfire, it’s me. I . . . was wonderin if you felt like hanging out at all?” he spoke out to the clouds in front of him, though even after another moment there was still nothing. A deal of disappointment did show on his face, but his gaze falling downward from such only served to land it upon his slice of pie again. His sight reached his stomach and his guiding organ started trying to tell him what to do, as it was well used to. But Soarin had another intention that sprung up right there and then. He reached a hoof out to Spitfire’s door; he knew that her living in a set of Captain’s quarters was definitively different than just in a room in the regular Wonderbolts’ dormitory, but on the other hoof he also knew that old habits died hard and he pushed the cloud door open without resistance, finding it unlocked as he could only have expected from her. He knelt down to just place the plate with his slice of pie just inside her doorway for her to find later, but he stopped reaching down when light coming from inside around the corner caught his eye. Spitfire was there, and assumedly awake. The realization kept Soarin’s head just off the ground for an extended moment while a decision worked itself out in his mind. It ended with him picking his head all the way back up and stepping inside. “Spitfire?” he asked aloud once he was in, hoping to at least make sure to alert her to his presence. He pushed her door closed with his back leg and walked around the corner into the short hallway, looking around as he went, not having been in the small building all that often while it had still been Captain Thunder Trail’s quarters. The door directly at the end was open to what clearly his friend’s new bedroom, although to Soarin’s surprise that wasn’t where the light was coming from; it was actually coming out of the only other open door. Soarin even began to question whether Spitfire was actually there again as he didn’t hear anything at all while walking down the length of the hallway. When he finally reached that open doorway, however, Soarin found the reason for that: there was his best friend, his oldest friend, crashed asleep with her face planted down right in the center of her form and paperwork-strewn desk. The blue stallion only spent a single second in a state of surprise before his face just jumped straight into a sympathetic look. Though she had never literally fallen asleep on a desk in the middle of filling out any kind of papers before, it was far from the first time Soarin had seen Spitfire in a state somewhat like this. She’d always pushed everypony, especially Soarin, though she did herself more so than anypony else, and somehow it always ended up with her vastly overworking herself every so often. Soarin sighed nasally and stepped up to the desk, setting his plate and accompanying slice of pie down on the clearest space he could find. The movement so near to her apparently held more waking power over Spitfire than Soarin’s own voice had, as the mare began to open up her eyes right after Soarin had set the plate down. “. . . h-uh . . . huh-gh, Soarin?” she took full four seconds to force out her one word, one name question, not coming smoothly out of unconsciousness. “Huh? Ah-yeah, it’s me,” he answered his groggy friend with a dorky smile. Spitfire made an attempt to lift her head off of its resting place on the desk in front of her, but only wound up partly successful, picking it up by no more than a hoof. “hmh, what are you doing here?” she asked him, only just getting volume into her voice right as she finished. She blinked continuously while waiting for him to respond, trying somewhat to wake herself up. Soarin tossed one of his front hooves back behind his head, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head and neck every few seconds. “Uh, I was kind of hoping you’d be around, and . . . uh, awake,” he answered her and watching her facial response right after he did. Spitfire rolled her eyes a quarter of the way, but then just let them drop into looking straight down, something Soarin had seen more than once before. He knew it was her way of rolling her eyes at herself, “Ah-I even brought the last slice of pie,” he spoke up again, removing his hoof from behind his head to indicate the delicious baked apple goodness, “I waited for everypony else to get some, I promise, but nopony wanted the last slice, so I figured it was mine. But when I was heading back to the dorm, I passed by and . . . kind of felt like hanging out with you for a while,” he stopped for a moment again, long enough for her to come around into some form of being fully conscious, and to sit the rest of the way up and return a very groggy version of her friend’s sincere smile. “And,” Soarin began to go on once more, “I figured I should let you get the slice, since it’s your promotion, and you didn’t get eat any at the Captain’s retirement party.” At that one Spitfire managed to raise her eyebrows even in her exhausted state. “Hey,” he assured her, “I had my eyes on that pastry table the whole night, trust me, I know who ate pie and who didn’t.” Soarin held the proudest smile Spitfire had seen from him in a long time, and he kept it up . . . until she let her face fall straight down into the desk. At that his smile broke and his expression almost instantly shifted into displaying concern, until Spitfire began picking her head back up again, and Soarin saw that she was laughing. “You never change,” she told him right as she brought her eyes back into contact with his. “H’yeah, growing up’s boring anyways,” Soarin agreed with her, which only served to further her amusement, resulting in an actual full bout of laughter from the golden mare. She sighed once she calmed down, and shook her head a few times before she said anything back. “Well, I could probably use you here to make sure I don’t pass out again,” she offered the opportunity for him to stick around, for which she received his unmistakeable dorky, but happy smile. “Will do,” he responded with a nonchalant salute. “And,” she added on the instant he’d finished his two words, “since you’re going to be here, would you mind making me some coffee?” *** Soarin’s eyes opened fully with anticipation as he came to the open doorway of Spitfire’s office with the cup of coffee he’d made for her, Right as he stepped into her office again, though, his eyelids relaxed again out of his relief at finding her still awake. She was holding her head between her hooves and staring with a hollow gaze down at the mess of signed, unsigned, complete and incomplete forms strewn across her desk. Her head didn’t even move until Soarin had practically stepped right up to the desk. “Here,” Soarin said with a sympathetic smile as he put down the coffee and slid it to her side of the desk, “you definitely need it.” Spitfire’s eyes opened up a good way as she took a few sniffs of the coffee aroma rising up from the cup, and after a moment she finally grabbed ahold of it took her first few sips. Soarin took a seat himself, sitting over at the corner of her desk, making sure he would be mostly out of her way. “Hey,” she suddenly said, regaining his attention, “you know, since you were so nice you wanted to give it to me, and since I know you were hoping for a second piece all night, you go ahead have it,” she offered, pushing the plate he’d brought with the last slice of pie over to him. “You serious?” he asked with utter delight. She just nodded. “Alright!” his dorkiness prevailed in his voice as he nearly shouted. His volume made her flinch for a second, and then him cringe at his making her flinch. “I’m still barely awake, remember,” she reminded him before lifting her cup for a few more sips of coffee. “H’yeah, sorry about that . . .” he said, slightly red under his fur. Soarin ate away while Spitfire sighed and picked up her quill with her mouth to begin filling out and signing forms once more. Soarin did occasionally glance at all the paper sheets before the tired mare, noticing what he’d mostly already suspected: they were collectively a single giant mess all having to do with her assuming the position as The Wonderbolts’ new Captain, though it made no sense to him why there was so much of it. Spitfire nearly drifted off a few more times, and Soarin had to keep nudging her with her own coffee cup to snap her out of it before she actually fell asleep. Ironically though, he actually spent a majority of the time insisting that she should just go to bed, which she refused to do until every last paper had been filled out and signed. When she actually came to the very last form, Spitfire began to lose consciousness yet again, but instead of this time just snapping her back to, Soarin decided to just dart his head in quickly and sign the final line for her. “Hwhuh?” she mumbled as caught him, barely withholding herself from passing out like she had seemed about to. “Uh . . . just finishing that off for you since you looked like you were heading for a crash-landing again. Don’t worry, I’m sure it matches yours perfectly by now, I mean it’s not like I’ve been doing anything but watching you sign stuff all night anyways,” Soarin explain with such passive smile that Spitfire just let her head fall back onto the desk again. “You know you could get permanently discharged from the team for forging your superior officer’s signature, right?” she teased the threat, though his easy expression stayed unchanged. “H’yeah that COULD happen, buuutt I kind of suspect my superior officer wasn’t all that wide awake when she was signing her forms, so I wouldn’t be too sure about her claiming she SAW one of her subordinates forging her signature,” he playfully worded her back into a corner, and then saw from the faint convulsions her upper body went through that she was laughing as much as she still had the waking energy to. After a quiet moment, Spitfire began aimlessly flapping her wing in Soarin’s general direction without once picking up her head from the desk. “Go on,” she struggled to say above a mumble, “that’s everything . . .” Her wing stilled and drooped back down weakly onto the desk beside her resting head, and she began to drift off completely into sleep without Soarin snapping her too that time. Soarin remained for a minute longer, looking down at his passed-out friend, and picked up a hoof to begin turning around . . . but he never made it that far. He woke her again, this time as he slid his head and neck under her just behind her forelegs and lifted her up. “Come on,” he said in soft, but still encouraging voice, despite the fact that it was him who was moving. “Wha-hgh . . . hm—” she produced indiscernible, exhausted sounds, but nothing else. “Yeah—naw, I wasn’t about to leave you like that,” he told her as he carried her out and around the corner into her room, finally tipping himself to set her down on her own bed when they got there. Just as he was about to lean back away from setting her down, Soarin suddenly felt Spitfire’s hooves wrap around his neck more snugly and with more strength than her tired state should have allowed. He froze in the moment and held still. It was a hug . . . the first in so long too, the last full and real one being the day they’d been teamed together at the academy . . . “You’re always the best, Pie Head,” she said to him barely over a whisper; the use of her forelegs to hug him had left little strength for her voice. Soarin laughed, mouth closed. Were it anypony else he’d have taken the insult as . . . just that, an insult. But, from her he laughed and smiled, and then he hugged her back for the few seconds he thought she could still remain awake. “Only for you,” he said back just before he let her go and gently pushed her off until she’d lied completely down on her mattress. “Good night Spitty,” he said as he finally turned and left. And as he had with his, she smiled, eyes still closed, at his calling her by her oldest tease. Author's Note Finally, I've posted something up again. I'm so horribly sorry for all my delay-extensions. I'll probably try to explain everything in my next blog post, but for now, everypony have chapter 2 of this. It's a jump several years after the last chapter, to when Spitfire makes Captain.
Better than a Best FriendA line of fresh cadets stood in a poorly-organized line on the Wonderbolt Academy grounds. All of them had already been there nearly five minutes, since just after the sun had risen, but they still hadn’t seen any sign of an actual uniformed Wonderbolt, whom they would likely assume to be their instructor for the week. “Aaat attention!” all of them heard an awkward-sounding voice shout suddenly from nearby. Lo and behold, it belonged to Soarin, who was just trotting up in front of them. He took a second to wipe away some food that was still on his face right as he stopped in front of them all, and then focused on the haphazard row of young pegasi. The surprise at hearing a voice finally yell out from behind them had sprung them to attention, but they still held their poor form. “Aahh—alright! Today we’re gonna start you all off with some pretty eas—I mean basic exercises, and we’re gonna crank up the intensity as we go and see how you do. The first day here is mostly about testing you to see what you can take,” Soarin tried his absolute best drilling the cadets in front of him, even though it came out as nothing like it, and he knew it. “So? Does everypony get it?” He had to ask a few seconds afterward, just to prompt a reaction from the semi-hapless recruits. “Yes Sir,” – “Yes Sir!” – “Y-yes ! . . . Sir!” They all said apart, not one by one, but horribly spread out enough. “Uh, alright, then everypony go on and head out to the flight course!” Soarin ordered them after they had all responded. The group all looked around at each other in apparent confusion, and then all around in general, until Soarin suddenly was hit the realization that he’d failed to indicate an actual direction to where they were going. Quickly he threw out a hoof towards the aerial rings where he intended them to gather, and internally cringed with embarrassment as he just awkwardly waited for them all to notice over the next few seconds. “Hey! Ahuh—get moving! What do you think we have all day?” he attempted to chastise the group for their initial slow movement, though it came about as well-put as his regular drilling. They did quickly pick up their pace in response, but following behind them, Soarin had turned what little disciplinary side he had back in on himself. Seriously? “What do you think we have all day?” You’re supposed the one telling THEM, not asking them. Soarin sighed as he though on. Come on, Stupid Soarin; Spitfire would’ve had them all in line by now. Pfth! Oh yeah, she’d of had them well in line in the first five seconds. Five seconds was certainly not how long it took Soarin to get the cadets properly regimented. In fact it wasn’t even until the afternoon that he even had them what might have been acceptable as half way. They got yes sir and no sir down just fine, they’d long since ceased hesitating to move when directed, and none of them were really struggling with the aerial exercises and relay team-building practices, but there was still a lot lacking: they still talked and whispered amongst each other so long as they weren’t the particular section of the group he was addressing directly at the moment, and they were nowhere near being anything of a cohesive unit in the sky. They even still had difficulties functioning well in just pairs! “Ah-uhHEY! Whatta you think you’re doing?” Soarin suddenly had to shout at one of the cadets as he saw the stallion clearly using the wind from his flight drag to blow a large portion of the countless clouds set up for them to buck just out of view behind a large cumulus. Even though he’d never drilled any cadets before, it was still obvious enough to Soarin that this one was trying to get around having to do as much work as possible. He knew for sure there was no way Spitfire would have that, so he wasn’t about to either. “Hey! I said get back here!” Soarin yelled out again, flinching inside at just how dorky and un-intimidating his voice really sounded. The young cadet stallion turned about in mid-air as some others flew by behind him. He held a confused look, or so he made his face appear, trying to look as if he’d either just heard or barely heard Soarin. “Huh? Yes Sir?” the younger stallion addressed Soarin, coming down and landing into a trot. “And what exactly was that?” Soarin attempted . . . if that was even an appropriate word, to interrogate the cadet, throwing a hoof up to indicate the large cloud the cadet had hidden most of his assignment behind. The cadet turned sharply and looked up at the larger cumulus hanging relatively in place. “Uum . . .” he began, intentionally drifting his voice off as he pretended, via actually doing so, to study the cloud intensely. “A cumulus, Sir,” he told Soarin, “type . . . uh, 2-B, Sir.” He was right in his cloud typology, though obviously Soarin didn’t care. “Ah—oh no, I think you and I both know what I mean!” Soarin tried again, but still with none of the effect whatsoever that he knew Spitfire would have produced. “I SAW you hide those cloud-smashing exercises behind that cloud!” In a blindside to Soarin, the cadet suddenly snapped after rolling his eyes through Soarin’s words. “Ugh, come on! Seriously, this is all just a waste of time. What’s the point of making us all do so much mindless stuff like this instead actually training us to do stunts aerial maneuvers?” “The point is to get you used to falling in-line,” the most familiar, and at that moment relieving voice Soarin knew suddenly responded to what the cadet had asked. Soarin flung his head over his shoulder relieved, but still surprised to actually see Spitfire approaching the two of them. “The point of all this is to get you into the routine of putting in HARD WORK and DEDICATION, pouring your maximum effort into things. You’re not being trained to do anything, you’re in an academy; you are NOT in ANY way part of the actual Wonderbolts. This whole set up acts as first-pass test for us to see who’s really willing to put all of themselves into everything they do and who’s not.” Spitfire stopped for only brief instant after letting the cadet know full well what the purpose of everything at the academy was. She stopped, but only long enough to make a single decision. “So get out,” her words were so toneless and blunt that they practically just slid right off of the cadet without effect, though apparently they crawled back and found their way inside of his ears as he did eventually regain his speech after a moment of just standing dumbfounded. “W-wha—wait, what?” the cadet asked back in quickening alarm. “You heard me; I said get out,” Spitfire repeated herself just as coldly as the first time. The cadet was frozen in place again, but for half the length of time before he suddenly started panicking. “What? No! You can’t just do that!” “Hm, I’m the captain of the Wonderbolts, and this is a below-entry-level academy for attempting to be considered for the CHANCE to actually join the Wonderbolts: you’re not exactly in any position to dispute me,” Spitfire responded without once breaking eye contact. *** “Agh, I’m really sorry for messing all this up so badly today . . .” Soarin told Spitfire after she’d dismissed the cadets at the end of the afternoon. He didn’t hang his head completely, though it still sunk down half way. At least, until he felt a hoof placed on him. It was Spitfire’s of course; they were alone on the flat top of the academy’s island, so it wouldn’t have been anypony else. “Soarin . . .” Spitfire held her mouth open to say more for a few seconds, but she just ended up releasing a sigh instead. She shut her eyes for a second as she took her hoof back off of him. “You’re too nice for this,” she said, actually catching him completely off-guard, “don’t look down on yourself for this, I shouldn’t have let you fill in the position for me.” “Wait, what? What do you mean too nice? It’s just that . . . I can’t really yell and scream and all that kinda stuff without it soundin . . . agh, you know,” Soarin responded, reaching a hoof around behind his head. “Yeah,” she answered him with a sympathetic smile, “that’s exactly what I mean. It doesn’t have anything to do with how dorky your voice sounds. You know exactly what listening to Fleetfoot’s lisp is like, but she’s still intimidating to cadets. You don’t come off like whenever you try because you’ve never really been like that anyways.” She stopped for a second but just saw that he still looked confused by some little bit, so she went ahead with explaining herself. “You never yell. Actually, I’m pretty sure you getting prickly that one time Fleetfoot called you Pie Brain back when we were at the academy ourselves was the maddest I’ve ever seen you, and I couldn’t even call that all that much more than grumpy. Most of the time you’re just always happy, or at least you’ve sounded like it for the past fifteen years. I mean, you’re not always smiling, you do kind of tend to look confused about stuff almost as often,” she paused just to enjoy his brief, unamused facial reaction to that particular comment, but she quickly kept going, “but . . . you’re just not an intimidating kind of pony.” Soarin was left both feeling and looking embarrassed by the ending conclusion, despite that obviously not being his best friend’s intention. He sighed, “h’yeah . . . I guess I kinda really should know that much more than anypony, but . . .” Something rare, extremely rare for her: a glimmer a worry crossed over Spitfire’s eyes, after her best friend failed to speak any farther and just looked down and away in a slumped silence. Her face dropped out of the smile she’d had and changed into expressing her rising concern. Right as she went to raise a hoof to him again, though, Soarin spoke. “I know you told me I’m amazing up there in the sky back when we were here at the academy, but we all are, or else we wouldn’t even be in the Wonderbolts. We’re all the same in that. But then, you can take charge easily, Fleetfoot can drill just as good as you when you’re too busy, Rapidfire’s the most charismatic stallion anypony’s ever seen and’s practically our poster face, everypony loves Surprise, Misty Fly and Fire Streak both have medical training . . . so what’s my thing? There’s nothing REALLY special about me; I fly good like everypony else, but sides that all anypony knows me for is just . . . eating a bunch of pies.” Soarin looked utterly miserable by the time he’d finished, to the point of Spitfire not having any immediate reaction to everything he’d just said. It took her a moment to really think, and in reality, to feel the self-downing Soarin had just let out. She knew. She knew what he was, what his thing was, at least that she knew him for, but she didn’t know entirely how to make it sound right for the way he was feeling right now. So before she even said anything back to him, she stepped forward and hugged him. The fact of just how long it had been since the last time, not to exclude also the fact that she had to physically lift his head up for him so she even could hug him in the first place, left Soarin more surprised right then than anything. “You’re a friend, Soarin . . . you’re my friend, my real friend . . . and more than I really deserved a lot of the time, with some of the ways I’ve been like. Best friends are always there when you need them, but you’ve just always been there period,” she paused her speech for a second realizing how much more true what she was saying was than she could even make it sound. She pressed the side of her neck against his while she still held on hugging him. “You’re better than a best friend. You’ve always been, right from the start. I’m sorry if I’ve really never let you know that much.” Spitfire let go of him as she let out her last sentence, revealing Soarin to have eyes enlarged and mouth a portion open in a visible mixture of shock and taking in. “I know . . . we’ve been together since the beginning, but . . . am I really THAT much? Any friend’s a friend,” Soarin asked and said quietly, almost calmly trying to protest. It was practically reflexive: the smile the came to Spitfire’s face during her response to him. “Soarin,” she said at first, shaking her head with the warm smile that had come over it, “no, you’re way above and beyond that. You’ve always been there, ALWAYS . . . pie or no pie involved.” For once, that jab actually did create a smile on Soarin’s face, though Spitfire just went on. “You’re always the one trying to cheer me up, AND the one looking over to make sure I’m still going. I would’ve crashed and burned so hard all those times I was pushing myself if you hadn’t been around. And then that’s just it: you’re not there when I ask or anywhere near it . . . you’re always just already there anyways.” Soarin just stared back for a moment, everything draining its way in until he looked down thinking over it all. That was interrupted though, when he suddenly felt Spitfire’s cheek brush and press against his. That shot him red, with no initial assumption of how to interpret it. “Soarin . . .” she said through a sigh, and he could feel her shaking her head by just the tiniest bit. The way she said his name let him know enough that his downing himself was starting to get to her; he’d heard it before. So . . . he stopped, for her sake, and out of the trust between them he believed everything she’d said. He leaned against her cheek with his own, just as she’d been doing. She really was right . . . even from the beginning, neither one of them would have gone anywhere if it weren’t for the other. “. . . thanks Spitty . . .” “Here,” she began a suggestion after she quickly pulled away, “I’ll take over the academy drilling. How about you go do all the paperwork that was keeping me from doing it?” she proposed the idea, to his head-retracting surprise. Soarin began to sound just a bit iffy about the idea, “Ahhh-are you sure that’s a good idea—” “You know how to forge my signature,” she cut him off, throwing on a friendly grin as well as she did. Soarin’s eyes darted to the side once while his face reddened a little bit, but he managed to return everything to normal. “You still do, right?” Spitfire asked, just to be sure. Soarin’s face had returned to its normal sky-blue, though he still had an embarrassed smile as he responded to his friend, “Uhh, yeah, ahh-I could probably still pull it off.” Spitfire’s smile grew at Soarin’s answer, and for a moment she just let him soak in it . . . he really needed to, she felt. She waited for him as long as it took for him to come to a true smile of his own, and even after he had she still held hers at him for a half-moment after before she began to step past. “You know my door code,” she said as she began to pass him. Soarin stood still for the first second she passed by, but even as he lifted a hoof to step away himself, he felt her brush against his side one more time Author's Note Finally, here's something at least. I'm really, horribly sorry to everyone that I couldn't get something up sooner. I won't go into how much classtime, course work, lab time and lab work I have this semester like I did last. It's 3:31 AM right now (Alaska Time)_(yes, for those who didn't already know, I live in Fairbanks, Alaska, and accordingly attend the University of Alaska), and I stayed up to finish this and upload it, and I also finished editing half of another chapter of Hurricane Paradigm which I should have no problem getting up by tomorrow. Then I have the weekend free to hopefully resume writing chapter 5 of Drug Dust. AND I'm really, really sorry to those few ( 2, I think) of you who consistently comment on things and try to talk to me. I absolutely promise the next communication attempt you make with me, I WILL respond. Nothing else I really can think of to even put in here given what hour it is. I'll pray you all have been enduring only good events the past few months, then I'm passing out till noon.
