Chapters Rumble always bore his sore muscles as marks of honor; every wincing ache was a reminder that he was giving his training his all.
But he had to admit, mornings were a little rough. Every muscle, every inflamed ligament and tendon cried out as Rumble forced them back to work after eight hours of disuse. It was all he could do to stumble—grimacing with every hoofstep—down the hallway and into the bathroom where he could wash away some of his pain with a cold shower.
Just one more day, Rumble assured himself as he massaged his wings. Just one more day, and then you can rest. Five days of training, two days of rest. That’s the schedule, and you’re going to follow it. Rumble peered longingly down at his cutie mark: a single, bold, white feather. I’ve done it for months now, and I can’t wimp out now. Not while Eddy’s getting faster by the day.
Feeling refreshed, Rumble made his way down to the breakfast nook. His older brother Thunderlane was already awake, cleaning dishes from what must have been his morning meal.
“Mornin’, little bro,” Thunderlane greeted. “I just got done spicing up a new recipe of mine: pumpkin muffins! I think you’d really like it. Want me to make you some?”
“No thanks, I’m good.” Rumble habitually reached toward the same pantry he always had, and pulled out the box of high-protein quinoa. He trotted past Thunderlane and grabbed a clean bowl.
Thunderlane frowned slightly. “I promise it’s low-calorie. Know how you’ve been wantin’ to slim down, and everything.”
“Again, thanks for the offer, but I have a precise diet to adhere to. One wrong meal and I could be paying for it the rest of the week.” Rumble sat down at the table, and poured himself a petite serving of quinoa grains. He evened out the top of the cereal with his hoof, to be sure of the portion size.
“Hmph. Your loss.” Though he had already eaten, Thunderlane decided to pull up a chair opposite his little brother and take a seat. “So, how’s school been?”
“Fine.”
“You doin’ all right in math?”
Rumble perceived the angle he was going for. “Yeah, I’m trying to pick up the slack.”
“Oh, I wish I’d kept up with math. Or even paid enough attention to it myself, when I was your age.” Thunderlane chuckled. “What sort of things are you learning?”
“Trig identities, and stuff.” Rumble discreetly picked up the pace at which he ate.
“Ah, trigonometry: the study of angles and tri… angles. Hey, I’d never noticed that before! Anyway, they say trig is really the most useful kind of math you can learn.”
“It really isn’t.” Rumble finished the rest of his quinoa in one mouthful, and unseated himself. “Look, big bro, I know you’re just looking out for me. Want to make sure I get a well-rounded education and all. But come on , you’re a Wonderbolt! You know training is important.” After all, not all of us are born like Eddy…
“Uh-huh. Of course it is!”
“So how would you like it if a truckload of bricks fell from the sky and built a school around you? Forced you to waste seven hours of your life every day? It’s pointless when you already know what your calling is and how to get there.”
“Rumble, bro… I just don’t think you should put all your eggs in one basket, y’know? What if becoming an ace flyer just… doesn’t work out for you like it did for m—”
Thunderlane caught his tongue too late. Rumble tensed up, and strutted toward the front door in a show of indignance. (He tried to conceal the aches this sent coursing through his shoulders.) Before leaving, he hollered back at his brother: “If you’re so fearful for my chances of becoming an ace flyer, then all that means is that I’m still not training hard enough!”
After school that day, he met Eddy Current in their usual spot: a clear meadow outside Ponyville bordering the Everfree Forest, situated right behind the Ponyville Schoolhouse. Rumble felt his spirits lift as he inhaled and exhaled a full breath of crisp fall air. The weather was just right for flying.
As foals, he and Eddy would always pass the time here—pitting their aerial acrobatics against each other—before their parents or guardians picked them up after school. Of course, back then it was all fun and games, and they wouldn’t put their full effort into it. Nowadays, Rumble viewed it as their hallowed stomping ground, a place they’d dedicated years of flight training to. These hills had seen every bit of their progress, each new trick they mastered and added to their repertoire. By this point, they owed it to the land to give it all they had.
“Muggy air, but with a slight breeze. Cloudy sky, but not overcast. Perfect weather for training, wouldn’t you say?” Rumble gave his companion a friendly nudge.
Eddy yawned in response. “Perfect training weather is also perfect napping weather. Only wish it were a rest day for us, eh?”
“Hardly. We don’t have much time left before winter. Who knows how many more days like this we’ll have?”
“All right, then. Did you bring the wind reader?”
“Of course.” He bent down and deposited his saddlebags on the ground. He reached into the largest among them, and began reassembling a digital anemometer. This instrument, like these hills, had been with Rumble and Eddy for years.
“How’s about we at least take it a little easy today? It’s the last on-day after all, and we really went hard yesterday, too.”
“With that attitude, it won’t be long before I catch up to you!” Rumble joked. “Or are you just trying to give me a false sense of security while you do even more wing push-ups on your own?”
“Heh. I suppose nothing gets past you,” Eddy said half-heartedly.
And so their training commenced. Ground stuff first: stretches, followed by wing push-ups, followed by some quick sprints. Rumble, with some effort, could actually get the upper hoof on his friend in this category. He made sure that with each set, he did at least three more wing push-ups than Eddy, and that with each sprint, he always kept pace. Today that seemed easier (relatively speaking) than usual, as Eddy must have decided to treat this as only a half-day routine, despite Rumble’s exhortations.
“Whatever you say about my skills in the air, you gotta admit, you’ve got me beat right proper on the ground,” Eddy said, reaching for his canteen.
“Maybe,” Rumble said, sprawled out on his back. It was a hollow victory; he could feel his body was slick with sweat and he was out of breath, while Eddy looked about ready for a photo shoot.
Eddy was just so ridiculously photogenic. He sported a golden coat with a bright orange mane that exuded pure confidence, with a chiseled masculine jawline to boot. He sported all lean muscle in all the right places. On the other hand, Rumble couldn’t count on an abacus all the times he’d been mistaken for a filly half his age, thanks to his pathetic rounded stub of a muzzle and pudgy limbs. With a look of disgust, he craned his neck to peer down at his barrel; even with all his dieting, there were still pounds of himself he could do without if he wanted the most aerodynamic form.
“You ready for the air?” Eddy invited, wings outstretched, a glint of excitement in his eye.
“Yeah, just a sec.” Rumble righted himself, and took a swig from his canteen. He mentally fought back against the performance anxiety creeping up on him, the butterflies of stress ballooning in his stomach. Don’t be such a coward! he chastised himself. You live for this.
And no more than seconds after Rumble’s assent, they were off. Their latest routine had been cemented in their minds for weeks, and required no conscious deliberation. They started off low to the ground: They traced the hills’ greenery and the tops of the trees as low as they could, as quickly as they could, and practiced sustained wide-arc 90°, 180°, and 270° turns, eight reps per set.
These maneuvers demanded long, slow burns of energy, and only got harder one after the other. By the time they were on the 270’s, Rumble’s body trembled with effort, and he had to remind himself more than once to breathe.
It’s almost over, thank Celestia it’s almost over, he told himself. One more 270, and that finishes the set.
They flew into the last clearing, where they would perform their final arc. But then another voice entered his head: I can’t do it, I can’t do it, my lungs are on fire! He shook himself out of it. You absolute wimp, you did it just fine yesterday!
But his self-directed browbeating was not enough. Eddy was gaining meters on him at an impossible pace. Fine, if you’re really so weak and useless, then just take the inner loop. From somewhere uncertain inside him: Thank you…
So with shame in his heart, he turned early into the arc, and held on for dear life as he flew around three-quarters of a circle of considerably smaller radius than that of Eddy’s. Nonetheless, they still came out of their arcs at the same time and place. Finally ready to rest, Rumble allowed his wings to slow down and approach for landing…
But Eddy just kept going, and going, and going, past the point they for a fact always stopped. What had gotten into him? Not one to be outdone, Rumble forced himself to follow. Then, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he saw what Eddy was aiming for: another entire arc. Rumble didn’t have time to brace himself, but attempted to pull himself through it anyway.
Twenty… forty… sixty… eighty… Rumble’s wings buckled helplessly beside him at just over the point of the quarter-turn. He threw his hooves in front of his face as he made an unexpected crash landing into the broad side of a hill. Waves of pain immediately washed over him, equally from the landing as simply from his overworked muscles.
Eddy noticed his grounded friend and lightly flew over to his aid, but (Rumble carefully observed) not before finishing an immaculate 450° turn. “You all right? I didn’t notice you were still following me.”
Rumble tenderly brought himself back onto his hooves, cautious of any serious injury. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be any. “What happened to eight reps per set?” Rumble asked, slightly irritable.
“Sorry, I… lost count of which one we were on,” Eddy said. Perhaps realizing how unconvincingly he had said it, he added sheepishly: “Besides, I guess I just felt like doing another one.”
What a show-off. “Yeah well, please let me know next time you plan on doing that. Not all of us can just increase our reps on a whim, you know.” Rumble tried to make his complaint sound playful, but failed to dissimulate his true feelings.
Eddy summarily apologized once more, and Rumble—despite the tendonitis in his wings, despite the impingements in his shoulders, and most of all despite his bruised pride—forced himself through the rest of their training.
~~
“I’m afraid the worst of it all started,” Thunderlane related, “right when he got his cutie mark. He was always pushing himself, back when he was a blank flank, but I thought he matured past that at the Crusaders’ day camp. Gettin’ his cutie mark in flying just brought all the same problems right back again.”
Twilight nodded and dutifully recorded it in her notebook with a levitating quill. Rainbow—who was hanging upside down in Thunderlane’s loveseat, still trying to find the most comfortable lounging position—chimed in: “Cutie mark in what again?”
“Flying,” he said wistfully.
“And the issue is he’s not getting anywhere in his training?” Rainbow Dash countered. “This sounds pretty cut-and-dry: You just gotta push him harder! Don’t need two Wonderbolts in the same room to figure that out.”
“It sounds like quite the opposite, actually, Rainbow.”
“Yeah, it is,” Thunderlane said. “You see, I’ve come to realize that ponies like me and Dash are, more than anything, lucky. Lucky to be able to make it in the big leagues as Wonderbolts, to achieve our dreams to the fullest.”
“Lucky? Nonsense. Are you saying we could’ve gotten to where we are now without constant blood, sweat, and tears?”
“I believe what he’s saying,” Twilight explained, “is that training hard is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to becoming a Wonderbolt.”
“In other words, I’m afraid that some ponies like my little bro just have a limit to how good of flyers they can become. If they try to push past that, they just... destroy their own bodies and self-esteem. They get to a point where the harder they train, the worse they get.”
Rainbow clearly took umbrage at this, but Twilight tactfully preempted her: “The map sent us here to resolve a friendship problem. Any idea what that might be?”
Thunderlane closed his eyes and sighed. “That just might be Eddy Current: Spitfire’s nephew, Ponyville High’s star flyer, and my bro’s best foalhood friend.”
“Rumble, are you okay? What’s wrong? Should I call for somepony?”
Rumble writhed on the grass in anguish, clutching his fat, disgusting belly. It’s not fair. It’s not fair! He gets everything he wants without even trying!
“It’s… okay… I’ve had these before…”
I can’t compete with him. I can’t possibly compete with him! Wouldn’t it just be best if I succumbed to these pangs right now… I want to say I died pushing my worthless body to the very limit…
“Had what before? You just fell out of the sky!”
Don’t lie, you’re enjoying every second of this, Eddy. Just once I wish I could see you suffer like this!
Finally, after a sixty second interval that seemed to last an eternity, his abdomen ceased its disturbing gurgling. Still unsteady, he got back on his hooves, and brushed some crushed leaves off his coat. “It’s fine. You didn’t need to stop for me.”
“Wait, you’re going to have to tell me what that was, Rumble!” Eddy insisted, placing a hoof on his friend’s shoulder. “I was worried.”
“They’re just hunger pangs. They come and go. I’ve been getting them since I cut back on my diet.” Not that you’d know anything about dieting.
“Are you trying to starve yourself? You weigh less than me at this point.”
“That’s to be expected. You’re taller and longer, and make up for it with lean muscle,” Rumble said matter of factly. “I have no such excuse.” I would kill for your metabolism.
“Rumble, I...” Eddy muttered. “I really don’t think this is healthy.”
“A hunger pang or two won’t kill me. Once I get down to my target weight, I can—”
“I mean this whole thing that you’re doing! Look at you!” Eddy grabbed Rumble’s wing before he could react and gently pushed in on where it connected to his side. It was all Rumble could do not to squeal out in agony. “You’re destroying yourself!”
Rumble pushed Eddy’s hooves away. “Once my muscles heal, they’ll be stronger than ever. I’ll be raring to go again, after the rest days.”
“Will you though?” Eddy lowered his voice. “Don’t you remember when we were foals? Back when these hills were a playground, and not a training ground?”
“Yeah, I do. You always beat me, and then bragged about it. Now you beat me and say nothing, but I know you still love seeing me fail more than ever.”
Rumble thought he saw a rare glimmer of compunction in Eddy’s eyes. “I’m sorry, like I said, I’m really truly sorry what a doofus I was when we were young. But I was just a colt. We grew up. And these days, you’re very nearly in the same league I am when you’re in top form!”
“Am I really?” Rumble set the bait: “What’s the most objective measure we have of that?”
“The wind reader, of course,” Eddy said. “Your record gust from a 200-foot vertical descent is 5.7 wing power, and mine is what, 6.2? Heck, you might even beat me pound-for-pound!”
“That would be encouraging, if only it were true.” Without another word, Rumble trotted off. He quickly returned with the digital anemometer in hoof. “I bet you didn’t know about a nifty recordkeeping function this little guy had. I know I didn’t, up until a week ago.”
For the first time today, Rumble saw a drop of sweat on Eddy’s brow. He pressed the “select” button three times in rapid succession, and the default 0.0 was replaced by a much more telling number: 8.9.
“Am I correct in assuming this is your record, Eddy?”
His friend was silent, but his face told Rumble everything he needed to know.
“When did you even make this record? I’ve held on to this device since last spring!”
“Must’ve been last spring, then…”
Tears welled up in Rumble’s eyes. “You haven’t grown up at all! You would rather effortlessly lord your top-class talent over me than develop it! For once, why can’t you try as hard as I do, actually break a sweat? You have everything I could ever want, but you don’t even—”
“Y-you’re the one that needs to grow up!” Eddy interjected. He was shaking. “I’m not going to be a different pony because you tell me to, and you’re not going to become a better flyer by hounding me! Your j-jealousy has ruined everything between us, sometimes I feel like you hate my guts!”
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. He wished it wasn’t true. “Sometimes I guess I do.” He buried his face in the ground. “The one thing my cutie mark says I should be good at, the one thing I try my hardest not to suck at, but I still do. Face it—at flying, at school, with friends, with fillies, you’re just a better version of me.”
Eddy was still amped up. “You, you! It’s always about you! Everything revolves around you!” He was shaking harder than ever. Rumble only now remembered that Eddy had a terrible phobia of conflict. Suddenly, Eddy took flight. “I’m sorry, I just can’t train with you anymore. You’re making me hate my own guts!”
And so he took off, leaving Rumble with a rain of a leaves and a spinning anemometer.
The next few days passed Rumble by in a haze. He lay listlessly in his room, soaking in the suffering he felt on a physical, emotional, and aspirational level. He just wanted to absorb the pain that was owed him from the mistakes he’d made, and then move on with his life. He would need no further convincing from Eddy or Thunderlane to stop training so hard; he realized now how hopeless it had been all along for him to try to compete with ponies who had so much better genetics than him.
Better genetics than him. Better mindsets than him. Better luck than him.
It was made all the worse, when his brother decided to let into his room one of his Wonderbolt teammates, and her “Princess of Friendship” tagalong.
“Some map sent you here? You’re wasting your time; the problem’s already resolved itself,” Rumble assured them. “I’m done pushing my body beyond its limits. I’ve accepted mediocrity. If Eddy’s willing to forgive me, I’ll probably get back with him, too.”
“It’s not about mediocrity, kid,” Rainbow said. “It’s about being happy with setting and overcoming your own limits.”
“The real reward lies in self-discovery,” Twilight opined.
“Yeah! You’ve got all the time in the world to figure out who you are!” Thunderlane exhorted.
Rumble couldn’t help but laugh. “I can’t believe I’m being lectured by two Wonderbolts and a Princess about knowing your limits.”
Still, with enough badgering, Rumble felt he had to compromise with them on something. The Princess pony thought he might “find acceptance” among flyers who were more “at his level,” at the weekend Ponyville Weather Team Junior Flight Camp (much less selective than the local Wonderbolts Junior Speedsters branch). Whatever. Rumble had experience blowing off lame classes and camps, and it would at least get these two nosy ponies off his case for a while.
And so the very next weekend he found himself sitting by his lonesome, observing from afar the rest of the camp-goers (most of whom were years younger than him) as they enthusiastically engaged in their flight drills. Rumble wondered whether, in the past couple of years, he himself was ever the subject of interest of an observer far away; somepony stewing in his own bitterness, who wanted nothing more than to warn Rumble of the futility of it all, the cruelty of it all, if you were not among the chosen few. Warn him that even if his cutie mark told him he belonged in the air, it did not mean he could cut it as an ace flyer.
After all, the weather division of even a small town like Ponyville probably outnumbered the total number of stunt flyers in all of Equestria. They earned a living doing things most ponies found boring—hence, why they were teaching the foals here all the coolest aerial tricks that a weather pony would never use in all their life. Double-revolution corkscrew reversals? Synchronized diamond formations? Give me a break.
Whatever. This is where everypony—himself included—thought he belonged, so this is where he would remain.
He turned his gaze across the horizon, to another campground. The flight camp was divided into four groups: the open camp, the high school fillies’ camp, and the elementary colts’ and fillies’ camps. This lattermost group was the one he now spied upon.
Somehow, he felt a little less bitter about watching these ponies practice their (much more rudimentary) flight drills. Perhaps because he wasn’t a little filly himself, and wasn’t able to project his own frustrations onto them. Perhaps because he couldn’t be bothered to feel even an echo of competition anxiety with them, the way he could with his own fellow campmates. Whatever the reason, it calmed him to watch these young pegasi learn the earliest ropes.
Rumble caught sight of one camper who was separated from the rest of her camp, a bit like Rumble himself. But rather than shirking off and moping like he was, this little filly seemed devoted to her own drills, much more fervently than the other girls. Upon closer examination, her efforts were obviously being stymied by some sort of birth defect with her wings. Poor thing.
He watched her repeatedly attempt—and fail—to achieve any sort of lift under her wings, although he could tell that that was only partly due to her defect. If she just compensated enough with her form, he bet she could fly like the rest of them. After fifteen minutes of this, Rumble’s sympathy got the best of him, and he couldn’t help flying over to her aid.
The filly turned around as he landed next to her. Shy and beside himself, Rumble could only utter a high-pitched, “Hi.”
“Hello,” the filly greeted cheerily. “Are you a growed-up from the big fillies’ camp?”
Rumble blushed. “No, I’m from the open camp,” he said, in a distinctly deeper voice. “Look, I can tell your wings are growing in a little awkwardly, and your left is smaller than your right. You won’t quite get off the ground, if you try those drills the same way your friends are.”
“Really?” she asked. “How can I do it then?”
“You have to compensate with your right, but not too much or else you’ll spin right over. You also have to pay special attention that you flap your wings parallel to the ground...”
And so Rumble spent the rest of the day with this filly—Pollen Breeze—adjusting her flying form until it was just right for her wings. She achieved some basic lift pretty quickly, and he even inadvertently taught her how to utilize her stunted wing to do a little midair barrel roll, which they both found hilarious.
“Thank you so much, Mister! Nopony ever taught me to do it like this!” she said gleefully.
“No problem, my pleasure. Just takes a bit of an individual touch, y’know? What works for others might not work for you, and vice versa.”
“Right.” The sun had noticeably moved lower in the sky since they’d begun, and the young pegasi were congregating back at the campsite. “Think I should be getting back to camp now.”
“Yup. Don’t want your friends to worry about you.”
She buzzed back to her camp slowly, a foot off the ground. “I’ll make sure I work on what you taught me!”
Rumble called after her: “I’m sure you will! You’re a quick learner!”
He couldn’t help but smile stupidly to himself in the aftermath of this unexpectedly wholesome encounter. A remnant of his former angst still snarled in the back of his mind, that black creature with a mind of its own. But this time he felt pity for it, rather than the other way around. You didn’t cure her, you know, it growled. She’s still a weak flyer. She will always have to exert more effort than her friends just to make do. There will be hard caps to her abilities that no amount of creativity will get past.
The beast’s words were as clear as they always were, but somehow they lacked their same bite. I guess you’re right about those things, another part of him thought, but I just don’t really care about that. She’s happy to learn, and I’m happy to teach. Why pretend it’s more complicated than that?
So this is it, then? The final crumbling of your aspirations to become an ace flyer? After all this confusion, that mark on your rear just meant you’re going to become some measly flight instructor?
Now that you mention it, that doesn’t sound so bad. If I can’t move the hearts of thousands with amazing tricks and stunts, maybe I can content myself with just leaving a positive impression every now and then.
At once, both sides of his mind exclaimed: But who knows what the future may hold?
