Room For Rent

Lucky groaned faintly, stirring and shivering slightly. He was laying on the cold floor in his lounge room, where he had collapsed several hours before after finally arriving home from his date with Spitfire.

Several parts of his body hurt. Mostly his wings and shoulder muscles used to support flight. His wings refused to even open properly, just hanging limply while the muscles screamed in protest at any attempt to make them do any work.

With another soft groan, the stallion dragged himself to the kitchen, pulling out a jog and glass of water to shakily swallow down.

Spitfire had already taken her leave, heading off for the Wonderbolt HQ for some reason or another.

Lucky leaned against the counter heavily, letting it take the weight off his legs a little bit, even as he peered up at the calendar on the side of the fridge. It was a Wonderbolt calendar, with the dates of all their shows in neat font underneath each day they were scheduled to perform.

There was a Wonderbolt show tomorrow.

Lucky looked at the clock on the wall, placing his glass down. 2AM.

There was a Wonderbolt show today.

With a long, weary sigh, he made his way towards the stairs, heading for his room, each step seeming to be harder than the last, until he could finally collapse half-on, half-off his bed, falling back to sleep almost instantly.

A bleary-eyed Lucky limped through the front gates of the Wonderbolt Arena, heading for the ticket stands. Only the last few stragglers were buying their tickets. Some of them were even dancing from hoof to hoof in anxiety of getting a ticket.

Lucky was completely calm and collected. There was no chance at all of tickets running out before he got in.

The line dwindled slowly, and one other pony got in line behind Lucky, panting and out of breath, sweating with exertion, mane frazzled.

Lucky arched an eyebrow, and offered her his spot in the line.

The mare stared at him dubiously, but accepted with a mumbled ‘thanks’.

Lucky just hummed to himself quietly as the line continued, up until he was ready to get a ticket. He slid across his bits, and accepted the ticket stub. “You’re in luck, that was our last ticket!” the ticket master said with a bright smile.

Lucky just nodded, before pausing. “Is there any kind of… lucky draw associated with this ticket?”

“There’s a lucky draw, yes. A free upgrade to the viewing box at the top of the stadium, including a visit from the Wonderbolt captains! Meeting the Wonderbolts! It’s more than anypony could wish for!”

“When is it drawn?” Lucky queried.

“As soon as I take the last of these tickets up to the raffle bin,” the ticketmaster said with a smile.

Lucky frowned deeply at that, chewing on his bottom lip.

“Something the matter, sir?” the ticketmaster asked, likely frowning.

Lucky nodded. “Yes, yes there is…” he said thoughtfully, scratching his chin with a hoof. “That mare that went in before me… what was her ticket number?”

“I’m… I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you that,” the ticketmaster said uncertainly.

Lucky reached down, pulling out another hoofful of bits and offering them up. “And now?”

“Ticket number 1059,” the ticketmaster said, guardedly taking the bits. “Though I don’t see how that helps you.”

Lucky dumped another hoofful of bits on the counter. “I want you to remove her ticket from the draw.”

“That is highly irregular,” the ticketmaster said, looking down at the bits and then back up at him. “What have you got against that mare?”

“Nothing at all, just circumventing serendipity,” Lucky said with a slight smile, adding another hoofful of bits. “You’ll be doing a good thing, even if you don’t understand it yet.”

“You’re lucky I need the bits,” the ticketmaster said darkly, rummaging around in his little basket of tickets until he came up with ticket 1059, handing it to Lucky. “I hope you choke on it.”

“You’ve done a wonderful thing for that mare,” Lucky said with a warm smile, turning on his hooves and heading into the arena.

Lucky found his seat after a little bit of searching, stretching out lazily amongst the crowd of ponies that had gathered for the Wonderbolt’s performance.

The mare from earlier was sitting next to him, in her allotted seat, rapt attention focused on the cloud-field, waiting for her heroes to arrive.

Lucky’s eyes narrowed on the crowd on the other side of the arena, where he saw the ticketmaster dump the basket of tickets into a big revolving drum. A Wonderbolt official with goggles pushed up on his forehead, took a step forwards and began to spin the drum.

Lucky waited until the wonderbolt fished around inside and pulled out a ticket, handing it off to another pony to take up to the main booth. Lucky turned to the mare sitting beside him, holding up his ticket with a sheepish smile. “The uh… the ticketmaster told me to swap my ticket with you?” he offered uncertainly. “Said there was a mistake.”

“Yeah, whatever,” the mare said, fishing around in her saddlebag and giving him her ticket, taking his own without another thought, stuffing it in her bag and returning to looking for Wonderbolts.

Lucky gave a sigh of relief, relaxing back into his seat and waiting for the show to start.

After only a few moments, a voice came over the loudspeakers.

“Mares and gentlecolts, our lucky-prize-draw winner has been announced! Would ticket number one-zero-six-zero please present your winning ticket to the nearest staff member. I repeat, ticket number one-zero-six-zero, one-thousand-and-sixty! You are our lucky draw winner!”

The mare beside Lucky was barely paying attention, still too busy eyeing the field, looking for flashes of blue.

Lucky nudged her side with his hoof. “Hey… isn’t your ticket number a thousand and sixty?”

The mare blinked once, rummaging in her saddlebag again, checking her ticket. “Yeah, sure. Why?”

“You won,” Lucky said, making a motion with his nose towards the box at the top of the arena. “You get to go meet the Wonderbolts.”

The mare stared at him for several long moments, the blood draining from her face. “W-wh-what?”

“Hey, don’t ask me, I didn’t make this happen. You got the winning ticket,” Lucky said with the faintest of sly hints creeping into his smile. “Go. Meet the Wonderbolts.”

“But… I… Yes!” the mare squeaked, stumbling off the seat and bolting away.

Lucky looked left and then right, and then pushed up the divider between the seats, stretching across the new space lazily, resting his chin on a wing in his now-doubled seating area, waiting for the show to start.

There was another wait for several minutes for the show to start. The sky darkened, thunderclouds gathering, sending long shadows across the arena. It almost looked like it was readying to rain.

And then the first of the Wonderbolts appeared.

They came in low over the top of the arena, with sparklers clutched in their forehooves. To the observers in the arena, they were bright streaks of gold showering sparks harmlessly down over the cloud arena, superimposed brightly against the dark clouds.

In perfect formation, each pony veered off to the right, twelve of them all flying in a perfectly ordered counter-clockwise rotation of the arena. Lower and lower they went, forming a cascade of revolving sparks, before they all began to spin faster and faster, moving closer to the centre of the arena.

The Wonderbolts all closed in closer, until they formed a tight circle, spinning around a common point in space, a band of blurred gold in the middle of the arena. And then, half of them split off, climbing a little higher, leaving six of them on each ‘band’ of gold, spinning faster and faster, closer and closer, until a tiny funnel of wind began to form. Clouds from the arena floor started to get sucked up into the vortex, giving colour and substance to what would have been an invisible spectacle.

And then, as one, each Wonderbolt dove down the vortex of wind, holding out their sparklers towards the centre. The sparks, originally falling towards the centre and outwards through centrifugal force, now burst with energy, whipped into a frenzy of sparks by the powerful wind they were subjected to. And the special golden sparks they emitted were caught in the vortex and carried up.

A gasp of wonder rose around the arena as the funnel of wind and misty clouds suddenly became a swirling vortex of brilliant gold sparks, casting the entire arena into a golden glow.

The twister persisted for several more moments, before collapsing without any ponies to sustain it, sending cascades of golden sparks shooting outwards like fireworks. Several ponies tried to catch the spark, holding the warm glowing objects between their hooves and gazing at them in wonder before they petered out and turned to ash.

Lucky was predictably lucky enough to have one of the sparks land nearly directly between his forehooves, and he scooped it up carefully. It was warm to the touch, but not unpleasant, and pulsed with a magical glow. It was as light as a feather, and its shape was indeterminate. Barely four seconds after he picked it up, it blinked out of existence, leaving behind a smear of ash.

There was a brief pause in the show as the Wonderbolts set up their next act, and the clouds overhead got even darker and more foreboding.

Lucky briefly remembered that their new show was titled ‘Forces of Nature’, and was hoping that they weren’t going to drop a thunderstorm on them.

Ten wonderbolts all shot up from below the arena, carrying thick metal rods with large orbs on the end. All ten of them went to a different spot in the arena, laying down the rods into carefully-positioned slots, even as the storm above raged and broiled with intense fury. The first jagged fork of lightning shot down, hitting one of the lightning-rods.

Immediately, the air around the rod started to crackle.

Several ponies in the audience screamed in surprise and more than a little fear.

Lucky wasn’t particularly worried about himself, but he was concerned that somepony else might get hit by stray lightning.

It took only a few seconds before Lucky realised they were in no danger. Down below, in the crowd, position at strategic intervals, were several unicorns casting some kind of magic. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. No lightning would be striking them, he was sure.

But Lucky wasn’t so sure about the two Wonderbolts who were rising up from the centre of the arena.

The fiery mane of Spitfire and the much more subdued colouration of Soarin gave away exactly who the pair were.

Several powerful lightning strikes arced down, striking the rods and setting them crackling with their own energy. And then they started to discharge.

Seemingly random shocks of lightning started to arc back and forth between the different pylons, zapping across the distance in brilliant flashes of blue.

The ten other Wonderbolt’s had wisely drawn back, keeping their distance, falling under the protective magical ‘blanket’ that was keeping the crowd safe.

But Spitfire and Soarin were right out in the thick of it.

The two Wonderbolts accelerated, spiralling together up out of the crowds in a tight formation, so close that they could reach out and touch hooves together. Just to show off, they each threw in a barrel-roll, rotating in the air without losing a single bit of speed or position, even as lightning crackled and snarled all around them.

They separated, each arcing to the other side of the arena, before they began to weave and wend through each of the pylons in turn, somehow dodging the maniacal cracks of lightning all around them.

The lightning snarled with increasing intensity, and the skies seemed to rumble their fury at the two ponies who dared to defy them. An insane amount of energy crackled throughout the arena, and all around the two Wonderbolts, even as they continued their death-defying course around the arena.

The two of them turned at the end, and as the lightning reached the peak, forming a bizarre pattern across the arena of crisscrossing, crackling silver energy, they flew out to meet each other in the centre of the arena.

The two Wonderbolts seemed to float, hanging, suspended in midair, reaching out hooves. Their hooves touched for the merest of moments amongst the booming of thunder and the flashes of lightning, and then they both folded their wings and plummeted through the killer discharges and disappeared through the clouds at the base of the arena and out to safety.

Lucky let out the breath he didn’t even realise he had been holding.

Several more crazy, death-defying stunts followed, each based on a different element of nature. Earthquakes, fires, hail, fireballs raining from the sky. Each more crazy than the last.

And finally, it was over.

The Wonderbolts, tired and drained from an hour or more of intense flying, all settled down and filed neatly up into the top box to meet the ponies that had paid top price for their tickets.

There was a commotion as Spitfire entered the box, and Lucky was quite sure that the mare who had ‘won’ the upgrade to the box seat had fainted.

With a faint smile to himself, he dropped down off his seat, and then headed for the back of the arena, joining with the crowd that was filing out.

A single guard stood in front of a door, with ‘STAFF ACCESS ONLY’ stamped on it, halfway down the tunnel leading outside. Lucky stepped up to him, nodding respectfully.

The guard nodded in response, arching an eyebrow.

“Your boss said that that thing you discussed the other day? It’s done. But there was a bit of a complication, and you’re going to have to go talk to him about it. He was very hush-hush about it, really vague. I guess it was important?”

The guard frowned deeply, looking each way down the corridor. “Really? Now? I have guard duty!”

“I’ll do it,” Lucky said brightly, reaching over and taking the guard’s blue cap, placing it on his own mane. “I’ll keep the fangirls away from the locker rooms, promise.”

The guard gave a long-suffering sigh, before tsking. “Fine, fine. Just give me a few minutes.”

“No problemo,” Lucky said, inclining his head.

The guard gave him a look up and down, before trotting off down the tunnel.

Lucky smirked to himself, opening the door and slipping inside. He left the hat on the doorknob, where it would be easily found when the guard returned.

Nopony really noticed the strikingly green stallion walking confidently down the hallways towards Spitfire’s locker room. He was holding a clipboard, and muttering angrily to himself.

Even a pony who wasn’t as lucky as Lucky wouldn’t have been stopped. Everypony knew that somepony with a clipboard was somepony important.

And so it was that Lucky managed to walk right into Spitfire’s personal locker room.

“Spitfire told me to replace you for this afternoon,” Lucky said before the masseuse in the locker room could say anything. “You’ll still get paid, of course.”

The masseuse perked up at that, giving a smile. “Then there is a hot little number at the bar just waiting for me to buy her some more drinks. Excuse me.”

The masseuse squeezed past Lucky, escaping through the doorway, and then he was alone in the locker room.

The locker room itself was small, but very spacious. For a single pony, it was extravagant. There was a bench in the centre of the room, with towels already placed across it, a bottle of oil of some kind, hot rocks warming in a bucket of coals, and various combs and cleaning agents all lined up neatly. The shower was already running, filling the room with steam, though it was empty still.

A door to one side was a storage room, with a mop and bucket and various other cleaning devices, while a second door led to a cozy little bedroom, dark and small, with a bed with satin sheets and softest downy blankets Lucky had ever seen draped across it.

Lucky took a good look around, discarding his clipboard, and checking out the various bits and pieces he had to work with. Once he was confident he knew where everything was, he sat down on the bench to wait.

With any luck, Spitfire wouldn’t be long. And Lucky was nothing if not lucky.