“Soarin, I think you’ve been leading me on for long enough,” Rainbow Dash said as they plodded down the wet street. “Who’re we meeting for dinner?”
“Oh, you’ll see soon enough,” Fleetfoot answered with a slight lisp.
“Well, he’s my best friend. I think you’ll like him,” said Soarin with a reassuring grin. “We do this every month, and he’s bringing a couple of his new buddies as well.”
“If you say so…” Rainbow hoped that she wouldn’t wind up on the wrong side of another Wonderbolt tradition. But Soarin seemed cool enough about the whole thing, so she decided to play along for now.
They slowed as they trotted past an antique shop, its owner already halfway through locking it up for the night. Rainbow flicked her ears to rid them of water droplets from the light evening drizzle, listening to the thumping beats of Canterlot’s Haymaker nightclub that they’d passed by. A few ponies here and there seemed to recognise them without their Wonderbolt uniforms, but they kept their distance and didn’t bother them. Rainbow wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or not.
“Here we are!” Soarin suddenly rounded a corner and picked up the pace.
Rainbow looked up ahead and saw Tunny’s Grill – a brightly lit restaurant nestled amongst the darker, closed shops. It looked all nice and cosy with the warm, yellow lights pouring out of its rustic windows that reminded her of AJ’s farm.
A griffon waitress guided them to a private room at the back, and they entered to find three ponies seated around the circular table. One pegasus stallion: orange coat, blue eyes, almost electric-blue mane. One unicorn stallion: brown coat, green eyes, browner mane. And one bat-pony mare: grey coat, yellow eyes, purple wings and mane.
The orange guy looked a little familiar, but Rainbow wasn’t sure where she’d seen him before. Before she could figure it out, though, the bat pony began bouncing on her seat and repeatedly tapped on the unicorn’s shoulder with a wing whilst staring straight at them and giggling like a star-struck filly. Rainbow felt a grin coming on when she recognised that look; that mare could’ve given Scootaloo a run for her bits when it came to fangirling out. The unicorn looked irritated at first, but when his eyes flicked between Soarin and Fleetfoot, he froze and pretty much stayed that way with his jaw hanging loose.
Soarin ignored those two and trotted right up to the orange guy, and then solemnly said, “Sup, Flash. How’s it going?”
Flash stole a glance back at his wide-eyed companions and sighed. “I need your help with a bunch of unbelievers. They all think I’m talking out of my butt whenever I say I know you.”
Soarin’s ears drooped. “Oh. That’s sad. What do you need?”
A huge grin exploded onto Flash’s face as he extended a wing. “Put em up!”
Soarin shot back an equally goofy grin, and they clapped wings once above, once below, followed by a solid, brotherly hoof bump.
Suddenly, it clicked.
“Wait, you’re from the Crystal Empire, right?” Rainbow asked as she stared at Flash.
Flash Sentry, the royal guard that Twilight might’ve crushed on last time. She turned to look at the other two, noting how totally ripped they were and added, “You’re all royal guards, aren’t you?”
“That’s right!” Flash Sentry grinned. “And you’re an Element of Harmony on top of making it into the Wonderbolts. That’s got to be some terrific PR right there.” He gestured to his friends with a wing and continued, “The bat’s name is Tsunami, and the horny one’s Stun Lock.”
“Eee hee hee!” Tsunami fluttered her wings as she bounced up and down on her seat, still gazing at Soarin with huge, adoring eyes. “I’m sorry, Flash. I promise I’ll only to doubt you a little bit the next time you talk out of your butt!”
By then, Stun Lock had recovered just enough of his faculties to start moving again. He got up from his seat, sidled right past Flash and dipped his head meekly before Soarin, Rainbow and Fleetfoot in succession. “Uh, sorry if this is weird, but I didn’t bring my Wonderbolts poster because somepony forgot to mention who we’re meeting for dinner. Can you sign my horn or something?”
“Enjoy it while it lasts.” Flash chuckled and sat down. “They’ll be over it real quick once we all get to know each other.”
About fifteen minutes later, all five of them sat comfortably around the table dotted with mugs of apple cider and half-empty plates of salads and starters. With basic introductions out of the way, Stun Lock and Tsunami had just finished mercilessly interrogating Soarin and Fleetfoot on just about all their exploits as Wonderbolts and subsequently gushing about it to one another whilst Rainbow sat there, quietly listening and feeling just a little left out whilst she toyed with a piece of lettuce on her fork.
“Rainbow Dash?”
“Eh? What?” She whipped her head up and saw Flash Sentry looking directly at her, apparently waiting for an answer to something. She grinned sheepishly and said, “Sorry. I think I zoned out for a bit.”
“No worries. I was asking about your first week as a full-fledged Wonderbolt. How was it?”
“It was…” Rainbow’s voice trailed off as she tried to find the right words.
“Not the smoothest ride, I’m guessing,” said Tsunami with sympathetic wince.
“I blitzed into a trash can because of a rookie mistake and got stuck with being known as Rainbow Crash. I spent two days moping about it and doing stupid stuff to shake it off.” She shook her head and squared her shoulders. “But now I’m over it, and besides,” – she shot a grin at Soarin and Fleetfoot – “these guys have no excuse now if they hit something other than the runway.”
Stun Lock tilted his head. “Rainbow Crash? That’s not too bad for a call sign.”
“Oh yeah, trust me, he would know.” Tsunami giggled.
All eyes turned to the brown unicorn. Silence filled the room. Eventually, Stun Lock folded his forelegs and sighed. “You just have to bring that up every opportunity you get, don’t you?”
“Uh huh. ‘Cause it’s just too amazing.”
Flash sniggered. “Oh, you’re going to love this one.”
Stun Lock rolled his eyes. “Fine. Here goes. I did my training in Fillydelphia, and that’s where I got the name Private Bee Jay.”
Soarin blinked. “As in, the bug and the bird, or the letters?”
“Letters.”
“And BJ stands for…”
“Exactly what your dirty little minds are thinking of,” he deadpanned.
“I’m almost afraid to find out why,” Fleetfoot said.
Stun Lock cracked a toothy grin. “Well, too bad, because nopony stops me once I’ve started. So, it was my first day of boot camp, and the drill sergeant… well… she’s a pretty hot pegasus. And me, being young, stupid and full of myself, I made a smart-flank comment about how I’d love to get a… you know, from her in front of everypony else during the morning drill.”
Rainbow leaned forward. “And?”
“She said yes.”
Rainbow felt her jaw drop. “Wait, are you serious? That’s… that’s not what I was expecting at all.”
His smile wilted and his mouth settled into a grim line. “Yeah… neither did I. So in the evening, she took me to the sky docks and she gave me a job: I had to blow up Prince Blueblood’s balloon – he was in town that time – by mouth and have it nice and tight by dawn.”
Tsunami, Soarin and Rainbow started sniggering whilst Fleetfoot just stared at him with her jaw hanging.
“Uh huh. No magic allowed; she said she had wards up to tell if I cheated. And if I refused, she said she would ram the gas hose up my bunghole and leave it on until I was big enough to be Blueblood’s airship.”
Rainbow giggled at the mental image. “I’m guessing that didn’t happen.”
“No. I failed, because duh, and she took a photo of the stupid thing all limp and wrinkly, with me on the floor half-dead from hyperventilation and posted copies of it all over the barracks. With the words ‘He couldn’t get it up’ at the bottom.” Stun hid his face with both hooves and groaned. “Next thing I knew, everypony was calling me Private BJ.”
“And once we found out, we all loved doing this in front of him!” Tsunami mimed holding something to her pursed lips and blew out a hissy breath – a balloon, apparently.
Stun Lock’s eye twitched. “Girl, you’re going to pay for that one.” He glanced at everypony around the table, and a grin broke out on his face as he stared at Tsunami. “Captain Cavemare.”
“Is that the old comic character?” Dash asked. She vaguely remembered an extremely hairy mare holding a huge club in her hooves.
Flash chomped on a carrot and said through his mouthful, “Yep, tha’sh the one.”
“Enough stalling.” Stun gestured with a hoof for Tsunami to get on with it. “Tell ‘em.”
“Yeah, I was going to, sheesh.” She playfully batted his hoof away. “So! There was this one time we were escorting a bunch of foreign dignitaries into one of Celestia’s summer palaces – the one near Neighagra Falls. I was taking point, and when I tried to open the front double doors so the dignitaries could, you know, go in, it simply did not work.”
“Locked?”
She shook her head. “Nah. No keyhole, and I didn’t see any bolt through the gap between the doors. So I started pushing harder, then pulling, but they just wouldn’t open up. I thought maybe it just needed a little more muscle, so I went all ‘Hnnngghh!’ and ‘Huaargh!’ against it. Still didn’t work.
“And the whole time, the dignitaries were, like, staring at me and Celestia knows what must’ve been going through their heads. My unit mates were all facehoofing, and I kind of panicked and started rattling the handles until my commanding officer trotted up to the door. And get this: she put her hoof on the handle, and you wanna know what happened next?”
Flash and Stun both had stupid grins on their faces. Rainbow guessed that the door must’ve had some special locking mechanism that needed—
“She pulled it sideways,” said Tsunami as she brought both hooves together and parted them.
Rainbow facehoofed and stifled a giggle.
“And my commanding officer just gave me this really disappointed look and said, ‘They’re sliding doors, Captain Cavemare. Welcome to the modern age.’” Tsunami turned a little red and chuckled. “But it wasn’t all bad. The dignitaries said that that was the best entertainment they’d had all week and were a whole lot talkier with us after that. So, win-win. Sort of. I’m very careful with doors now.”
Fleetfoot’s eyes slowly drifted over to Flash Sentry. “And what about you?”
“Hah. I wish it was half as interesting as these guys’ stories.” He sighed and tossed his mane, fluttering his eyelids as he gazed heavenward. “They just call me ‘Pretty Colt’ because of my amazing looks. I can tell you, it didn’t work so well for me in boot camp because everypony thought I was a wimpy pushover.”
Soarin snorted. “Yeah, right. Such a terrible life, having all the fillies going goo goo over you wherever you are.”
“Hide your wives! Hide your husbands! Here comes the Pretty Colt!” sang Tsunami and Stun Lock in unison, grinning like idiots.
“That’s pretty much it. I’m a one-line joke.” Flash rolled his eyes. “But I do have one interesting story, and…” – he lowered his voice to a whisper – “it involves Shining Armour.”
“Ooh, you’ve got dirt on Twilight’s brother?” Rainbow whistled and rubbed her hooves together. “Now, this, I gotta hear!”
Flash Sentry opened his mouth to begin, but paused when the waitress came into their room pushing a cart laden with their orders. Rainbow’s mouth watered as she took in the aroma of hay fries, stir-fried veggies, sautéed fruits, buns straight from the oven plus a few other flavours she couldn’t quite place. Probably Tsunami’s dish – she had what looked like a pile of crusty potatoes on her plate next to a couple of steaming mangoes.
With just a few casual glances, everypony had an unspoken agreement to dig in first and pick up where they left off later. Too much good stuff to let them get cold. Rainbow wouldn’t have expected a griffon restaurant to have such good greens, but she definitely had to hoof it to this one for their pea soup and celery sticks.
Once they’d made some headway into their meals and slowed down a bit, Flash took a swig of cider and continued, “So, Shining Armour. He was my squad leader a few years before he became captain – I was still a recruit at that time – and we were out in the foothills of Foal Mountain for recon training. Very thick undergrowth and lots of little critters.
“Stumbleweed was taking point with me right behind him, and just as he was pushing past a thick bush, I see this bug flying straight at his face. He saw it too, and I’m guessing he didn’t want it up his nose, so he turns,” – he viciously whipped his head aside and got a bit of sauce in his mane – “and the buzzing thing goes straight into his ear.”
Rainbow winced. “Eww.”
“He went berserk, and the bug must’ve freaked out too because he started screaming that it was crawling deeper. And we all just stared at each other because none of the manuals had a procedure for that. Dragon incursion? We’ve got at least seven different counter-attack formations. Manticores or hydras? Fifty pages’ worth of treatment for venom or poison breath. But throw a ‘bug in ear’ situation at us and suddenly we’re all dumb as bricks.
“Anyway, one of us managed to come up with the idea of pouring water into his ear to see if that might help, but I think it only scared the bug more. Now, Shining had been sort of standing there this whole time not contributing any solutions, and since he was supposed to be our leader, I think he was feeling a little anxious for not taking charge of the situation sooner. So he just up and yells, ‘Turn him over and pour it in the other ear!’”
They all went silent.
Flash grinned. “We all pretty much had the same reaction. Poor Stumble was on the ground, screaming like nopony’s business” – he pushed his plates aside and laid his head cheek-first on the table, and then tilted his face up a bit to stare incredulously at the space just above him – “and he just stops, looks at Shining and says, ‘Sir, they’re not connected…’”. He then pointed at his ear with a hoof and mimed his friend shaking his head.
Tsunami burst into a fit of giggles as Fleetfoot thumped a hoof on the table, laughing.
“Wow,” said Dash. “You’d think that for somepony with ‘Shining’ in his name, he’d be a little brighter, eh? I’m totally bringing this up to Twilight!”
“Wait, why didn’t Shining Armour just use his magic?” asked Soarin, frowning.
Flash’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude, you ever tried massaging a cherry with a sledgehammer? Shining’s magic is great for many things, but delicately pulling a bug out of your comrade’s ear isn’t one of them. He’d more likely squish the thing in there, and nopony wants to clean that up.” He popped a tomato into his mouth and chomped on it emphatically, leaving a bit of juice trickling down his chin. “To be fair, though, it was a pretty stressful situation for all of us. Can’t blame him for having a brain fart, and we eventually got the bug out with a twig, anyway. No harm done.”
After a pause, Flash narrowed his eyes and made a vague gesture with his hoof. “Well, aside from the fact that Stumble goes ballistic whenever something so much buzzes near his ears nowadays…”
“I’d drink to that.” Fleetfoot raised her mug and nodded solemnly. “Bugs are evil.”
“Oho, the voice of experience?”
“Last month, I was just trotting to town with my friends…” Her mouth twisted into a scowl. “When this bee comes buzzing at me slowly. It wasn’t flying straight, but it was spiralling here and there until it bumps into my shoulder and stings me. Then it just sort of fell off me, hit the ground, and died. That’s it!”
Stun Lock raised an eyebrow. “Were you close to a hive? Maybe it—”
“No!” Fleetfoot shook her head and threw up both hooves. “Not another bee in sight. My friends and I just looked at each other for a while, and I was like, ‘What did I do?’
“Seriously, it’s as if that bee was on its last legs and just decided, ‘Buck it, I’ma go sting a pony, that’ll show her who’s boss!’ My shoulder was painful and itchy for five days straight!”
Rainbow Dash’s face ached from smiling and grinning all night. “Heh, that does seem a bit evil. Like twittermite infestations! Those are the worst.”
“Pssh. I would’ve just eaten them,” Tsunami declared as she leaned back in her chair and used a couple of bony wing-fingers to toss one of those brown thingies into her mouth.
Rainbow felt her eyes widen when she finally recognised those shapes. “Wait, are those fried beetles?”
Tsunami crunched another one between her teeth and held out the half-bitten remains out to her. A couple of spiky legs poked out from the mess. “Mm hmm! Want some?”
An involuntary shudder ran up her spine as she recalled her experience way back when she’d eaten some of Gilda’s fried chicken on a dare. “Eh, I’ll pass…”
“But they’re so good!”
Flash Sentry snorted and waved her off with a wing. “Just take Tsu’s word for it. She eats a lot of weird stuff.”
“Hmph.” Tsunami folded her forelegs and shot a smug grin at him. “You once tried durian after I offered, and you loved it!”
Flash paled. “Umm…”
Her grin widened as she waggled her eyebrows. “You know you still do.”
“My mouth loved it.” He looked down at his belly and patted it, then added with a grimace, “My stomach, not so much. Ugh, passing it was a nightmare.”
“Huh. Is that why the captain ordered you to get a colonoscopy last year?” asked Stun Lock with a raised eyebrow. “You were looking real down that time.”
“What—no! That had nothing to do with it,” Flash sputtered.
“You had somepony looking up your butt? You never mentioned that before,” said Soarin. He thumped a hoof on the table. “Tell!”
Flash shifted his eyes around the table, probably searching for any possible way to divert the conversation to something, anything else, but from his flattened ears, Dash could tell that that his brain was drawing blanks. They had him cornered and he knew it.
“I was… bleeding. Out of my behind. I thought it would go away, but it only got worse as the week went on, and Captain eventually told me to get it checked out. Doc said I needed a colonoscopy to find out what’s wrong and—”
Stun Lock covered his mouth and sniggered.
Flash turned bright red and scowled him back into silence. “—aand, it wasn’t anything serious. They just found that—”
“That you were full of shit,” Stun Lock finished for him with a smirk.
Flash Sentry blinked a couple of times, then glowered at him. “You set me up. You’ve been waiting, what, a whole year just to crank out that punchline? Really?”
Stun Lock closed his eyes and inhaled through his nostrils, as if savouring some delicious scent, with both hooves raised like he was holding something indescribably precious before him and said, “The stars have aligned just right, and it was perfect…”
Flash snorted and rolled his eyes. “Whatever. It was just a haemorrhoid; the doc dealt with it and I healed up in a couple of weeks. I’d even bet you were the rat who started the rumour that I do have that time of the month, after all. You’re a terrible pony.”
Whilst everypony burst out laughing, Flash leaned closer to Rainbow and muttered, “See? This is what I have to put up with. Who needs enemies, eh?”
“Yeah, I get the picture. Ponyville’s crazy enough even without the baddies popping up.” She raised her mug and clonked it together with his.
A lull in the conversation set in as they went back to picking at their food. Good. She needed a little break to get her breath back. The others had a bit of small talk here and there between one another, but she was happy to just quietly munch away for a bit. With all the inescapable attention she got from the others during her new, intensive practice flights, she’d found a new appreciation for Fluttershy’s favourite style of keeping company.
Soon enough, though, she felt ready to start it up again. Something had been niggling at the back of her mind since her awful stunt, and now seemed as good a time as any to get it out in the open.
She tapped Soarin on the shoulder. “Say, while’ we’re on the subject, does Spitfire have more than one nickname?”
“Huh?” He tilted his head. “What makes you say that?”
“I’ve seen her badge. It doesn’t match up with what she whispered to me.”
Fleetfoot gasped. “Oh. Oh wow. She actually felt bad enough to let you in on that other nickname.”
“The Mad Pooper?”
“Oh boy.” Soarin covered his grin with a hoof, as if afraid that Spitfire might descend upon them at any time to dish out vengeance. “I can’t believe she gave that away.”
“Sounds gross, but there’s no way I’m leaving without hearing about it tonight,” Tsunami declared.
Stun Lock and Flash nodded rapidly.
Soarin slowly swept his gaze around the table and sighed. “Well, since the beans are already half-spilled…”
“Spitfire’s going to murder you when she finds out,” Fleetfoot murmured.
He put a hoof to his chin thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Spitfire already murders me every Tuesday at training. I don’t think I’ll notice. Besides, I’d better set the record straight before these guys come up with crazier stories.”
Soarin sucked in a deep breath and let it whoosh out. “Back before she made it to command, Spitfire had a thing for maximising speed and comfort during a performance, especially when it comes to weight.”
“What, like a diet?”
“Nah, think more short term.”
Silence settled into the room as they all stared at their drinks, hooves or the table, thinking.
“I have a feeling it has something to do with poop, but I’m not sure exactly how,” Tsunami eventually murmured.
“Spitfire wants to be as light as possible in a flight, and that means going just before the performance.”
Dash frowned. “I still don’t see the problem.”
“Well, this is where it gets a little complicated. She wants all of it out of her system before flying. If she goes too early and has to wait before the actual flight, she’s filled up again. And, you know how sometimes it’s just in that spot where you can feel the weight there, but it’s still too little for you to go? She hates that.”
Flash bit his lip. “I think I see where this is going…”
“So… she always waits and waits until the last minute before going to the filly’s room.” Soarin started giggling and had to stop for a full ten seconds before he could continue. “But sometimes, things get delayed for one reason or another, or she misjudges her… capacity, and by the time she’s zipping into the filly’s room, she’s absolutely ready to explode.”
Rainbow shook with quiet laughter at the mental image of Spitfire tearing through the hallway with her hind legs crossed, eyes wide and pupils shrunken to tiny dots as she frantically searched for the restroom.
Soarin had tears in his eyes. “My—my uncle’s a janitor in Cloudsdale Stadium, and he—hee hee!—and his buddies always drew lots to see who had to go and clean up the brutal carnage whenever we performed.”
“Pfft, snrrk!” Rainbow tried to hold it in out of respect for Spitfire, but her stomach hurt from clenching so much. “Bwah hah ha—ow, ow! Oooh… Ouch.”
“Did we mention that Spitfire’s also a fan of baked beans and asparagus?” Fleetfoot pointed out. “It brought us a whole new meaning to ‘Fire in the hole!’”
“Stop. Stop! I—I can’t breathe!” Tsunami cried between frantic giggles as she clutched her belly.
“Hah, suck it! You all asked for this,” Soarin retorted between giggles of his own. “They knew a Wonderbolt was responsible, and they started calling her The Mad Pooper. We soon heard of it, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who she was. We all started calling her that almost as much as her normal call sign. Heck, my uncle said the cleaning crew even had to come up with a new codename to classify Spitfire’s, uh… output.”
Laughter erupted all around her, and Rainbow Dash needed a whole minute to wheeze everything out of her system before she finally stopped and heaved a sigh. “Whew… Okay, you know what? I’m never complaining about my call sign again. Ever.”
“Yep!” said Tsunami, nodding sagely. “No matter how awful you think your lot is…”
“Chances are somepony’s got it worse than you,” Stun Lock finished.
Flash Sentry peered into his mug and hummed to himself. “I could use another drink, and maybe some dessert. Any takers?”
Rainbow raised her hoof, as did the others, and Flash obliged by calling the waitress. After taking their orders, she went back out and left them be.
“Hey, Rainbow?”
She glanced at Tsunami. “Yeah?”
“What’s it like being an Element of Harmony?”
Rainbow grinned and was just about to begin describing the sheer amount of awesomeness involved in powering up and firing a giant ray of concentrated friendship energy when Tsunami raised a wing to cut her off.
“And I don’t mean the super magical stuff.”
“Then what?”
“You’re… not what I expected. I mean, not that Flash had told me that you of all ponies were joining us for dinner, but you’re so… normal.” She frowned and clicked her tongue. “Wait, no, not exactly. More like, you seem pretty close to normal for somepony who regularly saves Equestria from world-ending threats. I would’ve imagined somepony like you having to fend off a mob of reporters everywhere you go, or at the very least snub dinner with grunts like us.”
Rainbow Dash, normal? There was no way she could let that stand.
“Well, I won’t deny that we’re all pretty hardcore, but I think we can keep things low-key when we want to.” She puffed out her chest and used her wing to brush off a non-existent speck of dust off her coat. “Besides, how am I supposed to put my awesomeness on display for everypony and get more fans if I act like a stuck-up snob? Coolness of that level is made to be shared.”
“Whoa, whoa… there’s no need to be so modest, Crash,” said Fleetfoot as she gently patted Rainbow on the shoulder. “Let it all out. Tell us how you really feel!”
“Oh, shush, dearie,” huffed Tsunami as she playfully waved Fleetfoot down. “A little spotlighting never hurt anypony!”
Rainbow didn’t miss the way Soarin’s and Fleetfoot’s eyes darted to one another, or the way the corners of their mouths wobbled as they suppressed their knowing smiles, and she immediately felt her cheeks heating up a bit. “Eh heh heh… To be fair, the awesomeness is spread out with my friends, too.”
Just then, the waitress came back in with their orders, and whilst she had everypony distracted for a bit, an idea hit Rainbow Dash like a lightning bolt. Seeing them all sitting around the table under the golden lights hanging above reminded her of Twilight’s castle, with all of her friends at the Cutie Map, just waiting to go on an adventure.
The Elements of Harmony.
The Royal Guard.
The Wonderbolts.
We’re all the same.
Rainbow Dash waited until the waitress had left, then pointedly looked at everypony, one after the other, and said, “You wanna know what it’s like being an Element of Harmony?”
She swept a wing across the table. “It’s like this. When we’re not kicking flank and being awesome, we’re goofing around and having fun. We’re a team, just like you guys!”
“Hear, hear!” Flash cried, punctuating each word with a thump on the table.
Soarin raised his drink. “Friends to the end!”
“Hoo-rah!” cried Rainbow, Tsunami, Fleetfoot and Stun Lock in unison.
Author's Note
With the exception of Private BJ's backstory, all of the experiences here are based on (allegedly) true stories I've heard from friends and relatives.
Adjusted for an Equestrian context, of course. I'm not actually related to ponies.
