I guess you wanna know how we met, huh?
It all started at Junior Speedster Flight Camp (the lamest name I've ever heard, by the way), it was the first flight camp I'd ever been to. My parents said it would be good for me to get to know some ponies, but I wasn't too happy about that. And I let them know it. I didn't wanna 'get to know' any lame ponies! Why couldn't I go to a griffon flight camp? I wasn't even that bad at flying anyway. I'd been out hunting enough times to know my way around the sky.
When I got there, I quickly realized the differences between griffons and pegasuses, other than the obvious stuff anyway. The first thing was that the whole camp was IN THE SKY. Griffons like clouds just fine, but we don't go building houses and towns out of them. We like being on the ground. Not that I'm scared of heights or anything. Another thing was the flight techniques they were trying to teach us there. Griffon flying, at least from what I knew about it at the time, was all about hunting from the sky. Obviously, ponies don't eat meat, so that wouldn't help them much, unless they were hunting grass. That reminds me of this one time I tried to teach Dash the finer points of hunting… Anyway, the crap at flight camp was all acrobatics and stuff, fancy flying, none of it seemed practical. But I guess that wasn't the point of a flight camp for ponies.
I don't know why, but the griffons I was around as a cub never really thought of flying as a competition. The ponies at flight camp did though. And I didn't mind learning a few new tricks, I thought maybe I could show off my new moves to my cousins.
Anyway, for the first few days nopony bothered me… did I just say 'nopony'? Kill me now. Where was I? Oh yea… I'm pretty sure they were all scared of me. I don't think any of them ever saw a griffon before, and none of them had the guts to look me in the eye, let alone talk to me. Even the camp staff were kinda leery of me. And I was cool with that, I had my personal space, ya know?
But after a few days, one of them wasn't so scared anymore. She started eyeballing me at practice, like she was judging my flying skills. I just ignored her. But by the next day, I got tired of her staring at me, so I said, "What're you looking at, dweeb?"
"Nothin," she said, looking me straight in the eye.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" I said!
"Nothin," she said again, casually.
"What's your problem, dude?"
"Huh? Me? No problems here." She just smiled some more. I can't tell you how annoying that was.
"Ugh, fine. Whatever." I didn't need to listen to her crap anyway.
For the rest of the day, though, she seemed to have something to say about all my aerial moves. I wasn't really paying attention to her comments, though. I didn't really care what any of those ponies thought of me. So I just shot her some comebacks like, "Whatever, dweeb," and the classic catch-all comeback, "Your mother." Love that one.
By the end of the day she was really getting on my nerves. The flight coaches were done with their jobs for the day, and practice was over. All the ponies were exhausted from all that flying, and they were all relaxing, but not me! I wanted to get some air time in, all to myself, without that annoying rainbow one bothering me. So I went out to the cloud field we were practicing over, and I tried to do a barrel roll, which we'd been trying to do all day. Hey, they're NOT easy! None of the ponies managed to do one right either.
I was out practicing moves. Alone. But after a couple of tries I kinda had a feeling I wasn't as alone anymore. Sure enough, just as I was recovering from another botched barrel roll, I heard that annoying voice behind me, laughing. I didn't even need to look at her to know she was pointing at me.
"HAHAHAHA! DWEEB!"
That was it, that was the last straw. I flew over to that annoying rainbow pegasus and tackled her midair. We fell into a cloud and we wrestled for a good minute. She put up a good fight for a little pony, but being a predator by nature, and the fact that I have talons, gave me an edge in the fight, and soon I had her pinned on her back.
I was in full rage mode. I was an inch away from ripping her guts out with my bare talons. And I would have done it too, but then I looked into her eyes. Those big rosy eyes. I stared into her soul and she stared right back. I could see fear in those eyes, in fact I could just about smell it on her. But there was no crying, no sniveling, no pleading for her life, she just looked back at me with a straight face. I knew that face, she knew she bucked up, and she was willing to face the consequences, I've been in that situation more times than I'd care to say, so I respect that. My rage just melted away to guilt, and I got off her. I almost killed her over a stupid little word and I just couldn't bear to look her in the face. After she got back on her hooves, I managed to say, "I'm sorry… I… overreacted." Which was a huge understatement.
"It's ok… I'm sorry I called you a dweeb." There was a moment of silence between us. "You put up a good fight," she said.
When I hocked up the courage to look at her again, she was smiling under all the bruises I just gave her, blood dripping from the side of her mouth. "So did you," I said.
"You wanna hang out sometime?" She asked me. I almost killed her and she wanted to hang out, I knew right then and there that she was one cool pony.
"Sure." I smiled back at her, and it hurt like hell. She managed to plant at least one hoof punch on each cheek. It was also the first time I got in a fight with a pony. Ya know what I found out? Hooves bruise a lot worse than knuckles do...
For a second we just smiled at each other, admiring our work, and then it dawned on me that I didn't even know her name. I opened my beak to ask her, but she was one step ahead of me.
"Rainbow Dash. What's yours?"
"Gilda Redbeak."
Sometimes all it takes is a little fight to make a good friendship.
Hooves, Talons, and Wings
Author's Note: Sorry I took so long, writer's block and all that :P
It was a long day at flight camp. We started out in the morning with a lesson on proper thundercloud handling procedures… LAME! The weather control stuff was always boring. But it was kinda funny when that little grey pony electrocuted herself. What? She was OK! And who knows, right? Maybe I'll use that weather crap someday. Maybe. Anyway we got to the fun stuff later. At the end of the day, me and Dash were out practicing loop-the-loops with all the other ponies. We just came out of a loop, perfectly sync'd with each other by the way, when we looked at each other for a second, mid-flight. Dash had that sneaky smirk on her face, and I probably did too. We both knew what the other was thinking. You, me, race. Right now. So instead of turning around and heading back to base, we kept flying. We didn't even stop to start the race officially, we just sped up. We didn't know where we were going, and we didn't care either. Those were the days, when we could just fly. Just enjoy it, ya know?
We were pretty evenly matched. I was giving it my all. But now that I think back about it, and I hate to admit it, but she might have been going just a little bit easy on me. She always told me she did a sonic rainboom once, but I never really believed her. Even if she wasn't supersonic, I never did understand how she could be so fast with those tiny little wings. Anyway, we weren't going anywhere in particular, but we caught sight of a mountain peak off in the distance, we looked at each other, and agreed silently again. Talking at those speeds would be pretty useless anyway. That peak was our finish line.
Dash started getting ahead of me. I flapped as hard and as strong as I could. I was straining so much, I had my teeth grit and my talons clenched. I had to catch up to her! My pride, my life, the reputation of all griffons was on the line! Yea, I know I'm exaggerating a bit here, but that's how I felt in the moment! Luckily, a couple of clouds were in her way, so she had to move around them. I was far enough to the side that those clouds didn't bother me. In the time it took for Dash to dodge the clouds, I caught up to her. She looked back and saw me right behind her, she gawked at me, obviously surprised to see me catching up, and looked forward again. We were almost there.
I got ahead of her by just a feather, and when we finally got to the finish line I slowed down and landed gently on a rocky piece of mountain top. Dash came in too hot and slid on her hooves on the rocky ground before rolling head over hoof. She lazily sat down and didn't bother brushing herself off. Her coat was covered in dust from that sloppy landing. We both sat there panting for breath. The cold mountain air burned my throat, I was glad when I was finally breathing normal again, and I walked over to where Dash was sitting.
"That was a close second, Dash," I said, nudging her in the shoulder.
"WHAT?! NO WAY, I was first!" She looked ridiculously shocked.
"Shyea right dude! I totally landed first!"
"But I was HERE first!" She pointed a hoof to the ground.
I gave her a dirty look she did the same back to me, still breathing hard. After a second or two we both smiled and just broke out laughing. It was one of those times when you laugh so hard, you cry, even if it's something stupid you're laughing at. I haven't had one of those in a while…
When I was done wiping the tears from my eyes, I walked up next to Dash and said to her, "You're crazy dude." And I put my arm around her shoulders.
She shivered a little bit.
"What's wrong? You don't mind me touching you, do you?" I asked her.
"What? No. I don't know, I just got the shivers when you did. I dunno why." Dash shrugged.
"Oh, OK…" I think maybe my talons kinda freaked her out a little bit. I found out later that most ponies are kinda scared of them. Probably didn't help that we just had a fist… um… hoof? -fight a couple days before. We sat there together just looking at the scenery. There were a bunch of woods down there with splotches of grassy land, very green. Everything looked so small, I think we got higher up on the way to that mountain. I'm not big on mushy stuff like watching sunsets, but it's always nice to cool down after a good flight. Yes, the sun was setting, by the way.
"I bet Mr. What's-his-face is gonna be pretty ticked that we just took off," I said.
"Who, Mr. Thunderclouds? Yea…" She snickered, "He will. But I'll just tell him that big mean Gilda made me do it."
"What? HEY!"
Dash snickered and nudged me with a hoof. "I'm just messin' with ya Gilda!"
"Ha ha. Good one, Dash." I put my arm back around her.
I noticed she looked at the talon hanging over her shoulder. She looked back up at me with eyes like a little cub that did something wrong, and asked, "Hey Gilda?"
"Yea Dash?"
"What's it like having claws?"
"Talons," I pointed out… literally.
"You know what I mean…" She rolled her eyes at me.
"Hmm, I dunno, I never really thought about it. I guess it's easy to grab stuff..." Even back then I knew I probably shouldn't mention killing little critters with these bad boys. "How do you do stuff with hooves, anyway?"
"Just like this!" She reached up and ruffled my crest feathers.
I looked up. "Ya don't say?" I took my arm off her shoulders and messed up her mane (more than it was already).
She giggled and answered me, "I guess it IS a little hard to grab things…" She looked down and scooped up a stray rock from the ground with a hoof.
"That didn't look so hard," I said, giving her a crooked smile, and pointing at the rock in her hoof.
"Yea, yea. But don't even get me started on brushing my teeth!"
"It can't be that bad…?"
"It is! Stupid unicorns have it SOOO easy, they can just make stuff float around with their freaky magic!" She waved a hoof around in the air.
"Yea… but the freaky unicorns can't fly."
Dash looked at me with a little smirk, and I could see in her eyes, she knew exactly what I was thinking.
"Race ya back to camp?"
"Last one back is a gnarly dragon egg!"
