Lightning returns.

by zman123

Rating: everyone
Tags: Lightning Dust, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Rainbow Dash, Adventure, Wallflower Blush
Length: 2673

It was never the intention of an actually very caring golden maned mare, to do the terrible damage she did to five respected heroes of Equestria. Yet even in a land as fair as fair Equestria, the gift of redemption is harder for some than for others.

It was never the intention of an actually very caring golden maned mare, to do the terrible damage she did to five respected heroes of Equestria. Yet even in a land as fair as fair Equestria, the gift of redemption is harder for some than for others.
Good intentions alone can't save a criminal from their punishment.
Yet even in punishment, the magic of friendship and the elements of harmony can shine bright.

For some criminals who seek retribution, freedom is a long walk rather than a brisk run.
Yet Wonderbolts never yield.
And if there is one great statement that Commander Hurricane himself coined in the glory days of the Wonderbolts, it is that one should never laugh at former Wonderbolts.

Published 2019-09-30 16:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-09-30 16:20:01 UTC

From a washout's point of view

From a Washout's point of view

There was once a time where things were different, for me at least.
Different in the good kind of way. The good kind of way where simply thinking about that time, is enough to drive me to uncontrollable tears which leak past my tightly shut eyes and my most valiant attempts to steel myself as I pound the ground forcefully with my hooves.

I liked to think I was pretty good at steeling myself, at least when it mattered anyway.
It was a quality two wonderful ponies, one a mare and one a stallion would have wished their young filly to possess in even the most murky skies that the unpredicatable hot air balloon known only as "life" was bound to take every pony through at one point or another.

Though for some ponies, that part of their great journey came sooner rather than later
I was born in the "progressive" and "opportunistic" urban jungle known to most Equestrians as "Manehattan", a "cutting edge city of the future" where smoke from tall factory chimneys covered the sky in an almost constant grey blanket.
Every street was a hub of activicty from the first rays of the dawn to the pitch darkness of midnight. Stalls with every kind of thing, object and commodity a pony could possibly think up littered the city haphazardly, it took real skill to take a step and not bash into this pony's collections of pots and pans or knock over that pony's exotic glass chess set.

It was never quiet.
Late into the night, the noisy machines of the city factories ran nonstop making a kind of noise. A kind of noisy noise. The kind of noisy noise that sounded...noisy.
Noisy enough to drive a pony not used to this hubbub to madness as they forcefully jammed hooves into ears in a desperate attempt to ward off the thick din.

This was the city of smoke and noise. Of trying to get from one building to the next without collecting a lungful of choking hot ash and trying to wake up without droopy inflammed red eyes and a splitting headache which made you swear that somepony had hit you over the head with a lead pipe while you were trying and failing to get some rest.
It was a difficult city. but it was my difficult city and even now, a city for which I'd give just about anything if I could just have the faintest hope of catching a glimpse of its wonderful, messy streets just one last time.

Its then that I remind an overly nostalgic me that it wasn't really the messy streets full of rubbish, the dirty buildings which badly needed a paintjob and some serious yardwork or the sound of a million cogs and gears turning in unison making my eardrums split with every second the horrible noise festered in my nearly cracking skull which I was missing.
To say I had no friends from back in Manehattan would be a very generous thing to say.
"Friendship" at least in the definition that most ponies would use it wasn't really something that I could say existed back in Manehattan.
Not for me at least.

Mom and dad.
I miss you.
I mean I...Really miss you.
A lot.
Why did you have to leave me so soon to face this hard world alone so young.
It's not fair. It just isn't fair.

You told me I was ready. i thought I was ready. My teacher Spitfire told me I was ready.
My Wing-Pony or rather my former partner, my wonderful and amazing partner Rainbow Dash knew better though.
She and she alone knew I wasn't ready at all.
She tried, she tried so hard to warn me about the dangers of my recklessness, my taking things too far, my trying too hard to be as I would have called it "the best".

Too fast. I flew too fast to see exactly where I was going. I was an out of control runaway mare who had long thrown off her rider, long abandoned her herd and who was speeding wildly in a blind rage towards the proverbeal cliff that the metaophorical rider and herd had simply been trying to guide her away from to no avail.
And when a high horse did finally fall, she fell hard.
Hard enough to take her back to earth from the sky.

Dash had hesitations about my crazy idea which neither of us could have in all honesty predicted would end the way it did.
Dash, my teammate and the element of loyalty herself (yes I kept up with the news and I wasn't blind to a true hero when I saw one) tried to tell me that what I was doing was both stupid and dangerous.

I ignored her.
I ignored good advice from one of the six ponies who I and just about all of Equestria should have owed our very lives towards.
And prevailed on her to join me in my very, very evil scheme which begun my descent down the downward slope that I had tried all my life to stay well away from.

The downward slope of being labelled as a criminal and shunned by all society as a hated pariah who deserved nothing but scorn.
Perhaps it was just cruel fate that five innocent ponies had chosen this very unfortunate moment to come into a highly dangerous training zone meant only for fast flying Pegasi routinely practising extreme stunts as par the course for an extreme flying squad on a beautifully crafted purple balloon.
Celestia alone knew why nothing I ever tried to do in life caused only more pain to ponies I'd gladly have befriended instead any day of the week.

Or did every dice in the imaginary land of luck roll nothing but snake eyes today. Did the player in the lottery of chance get thirteen on every number on the ticket?
I only wanted to please my mentor, yet irony had had its last laugh at me today and it was going to laugh long and hard.
My mentor wasn't going to be pleased and neither was my conscience when what was about to happen became a movie that would be played back to back every night when I tried to get sleep. I wouldn't be sleeping for a long, long time and when I did it would only be to wake up a few moments later on the verge of screams, having been violently ejected from the land of peaceful slumber.

I don't want to talk much about what happened after I rashly and inconsiderately made the decision which turned me into another Nightmare moon with how petty my primary motive to win more attention for myself was. Well the winds me and Dash conjured up certainly blocked out the sun for those five innocent ponies who must have seen nothing but pitch blackness in the terrible seconds they felt for sure would be their last, the darkness in their hearts the same as that of the wind covered skies.

I had become in that moment another Discord with the sheer amount of destruction my unruly actions past were capable of wreaking and nearly did.
Nothing was coherent or orderly for me in the seconds I was sucked inside the tornado I stupidly thought I could control and was tossed about like inside a washing machine set to maximum power and "Super clean" mode. The seconds turned into years and my mind all but a blur as my rapidly spinning body tried to make sense of anything, anything at all.

There may not have been any rule in the Wonderbolt rulebook about a tornado but I didn't need Spitfire to tell me how I had broken just about every other rule in the Academy.

I was now another Chrysalis since no responsible Wonderbolt and heck no responsible Pony would be willing to endanger so many lives for nothing other than personal gain.
It was ironic and funny at the same time in a twisted way.
I had set out to gain the respect and I daresay, love of the Wonderbolts that were my supervisors and I had only gained their mortal hatred instead.
At least Chrysallis would have been seen as a hero in the eyes of the other Changelings with how she was at least treating them well and keeping them alive.

These were three facts I realized now, but now was by far too late for any kind of sincere apology.
My pounding head was still trying to make sense of everything as through dazed eyes and ears I watched Dash angrily refuse my hoofbump and adamantly turn her back to me as she refused to talk any further and walk away in the direction of the main building.

I tried to formulate more words, an inquiry as to why every other pony was beginning to look at me as if I had attacked Princess Celestia herself but my woozy head and ringing ears wouldn't let me say anything more.

The sight of two dozen disapproving looks began to blur before me as the ringing attacking my eardrums grew too strong for me to shrug away anymore.
Then darkness and a burning sensation in my incredibly sore head became my world as I slipped and fell onto the cloudy platform.

I woke groggily to see two uniformed guard ponies hovering above me like griffons staring down their next helpless catch.
As I shook my head and blinked my eyes to at least take away the edge from the splitting headache which was still ailing me even now that I had been through a brief state of unconsciousness, my confusion turned to fear and then to an indescribably state of heart-wrenching guilt which I would not wish upon any pony as I was brought up to date with the horrific events which had transpired since I had lost my mind to the terrible winds I had had me and my partner Dash create to clear the clouds in record time.

To put it as delicately as possible, the cloud clearing record time for the Wonderbolt had been broken by my creative idea for a tornado...along with a whole lot of other more important things which I had completely lost sight of which had also been broken.
My reputation and my lifelong hope of becoming a qualified Wonderbolt were among the pile of broken things.
Spitfire's until now great respect for my skills and determination had also been cast to the winds I could tell as she herself stepped closer and closer upon me with a stone cold mask of tranquil fury and utter disdain. It made my blood as cold as the snow on the peak of mount Yakyakistan.

But more damning for me than any of that was the Element of Loyalty's silent frown as a cooling evening breeze played with her Rainbow patterned mane and it briefly slid across her emotionless eyes as she and the five ponies I only now realized must have been the five other keepers of the Elements of Harmony and Rainbow's friends, watched me in absolute silence.

They said no words as Spitfire confiscated my golden Leadpony badge with a loud and forecful tear leaving a gaping hole in the blue and yellow material of my uniform and gestured with one hoof for the two disgruntled stallions in suits to escort me far away.
That silence said much more than the combined words of every one of the thick stacks of books in Celestia's royal library ever could.

The emotion or lack thereof in their stares was more expressive than the most furious shout or the most heartbroken sob.
My attempt to speak but a final word of apology snagged on my tongue as with a single gesture of her hoof, Spitfire silently ordered the two guards who had brought me up to date about my misdeeds to lead me far away.
There was no time for any further communication as I was led away from the six heroes of Equestria who I had unintentionally antagonized and impugned with my thoughtlessness.

I could have swore I saw my Wingpony or rather teammate smile a little in the corner of my eye as Spitfire returned to her side, a little grin that I caught for but a glimpse for soon I was ushered into the Academy main building where I would have my uniform removed and be given an official eviction.
But I felt no grudge for a brilliant flyer who had been the first cadet in ages to have matched skills with me during our first meeting, and more importantly the first genuinely friendly pony who seemed to want to be my friend since I had come to the Wonderbolts Academy where every day was a gruelling regimen of all training and work with no play or socialising.
No time for petty trifles like making friends and holding friendly conversations.

It wasn't a true friendship truth be told. It was more more a professional sort of relationship between two very good flyers who were the only students in a school full of slackers who were actively trying for the gold and nothing else.
Two experts in a crowd of newbies who were the only ponies able to match skills with one another and when combined could have had a golden chance to become an untouchable duo.

And a jaded loner who had spent her days friendless for too long to stay fully sane who had finally met one of the harmony bearers who each embodied one of the core elements of friendship itself as a concept.
The element of Loyalty no less, the trait any Wonderbolt would value even more greatly than the other five aspects.
The proverbial bridge that served to connect the other friendship elements together in a beautiful way that made them impossible to break apart.

The perfect element for when me and Rainbow Dash would join our forces to soundly beat out the other puny amatuers and go forward as the Academy champions who would be fast forwarded to the aerial stunt team of every Pegasi's dreams.
Or so it should have been.
I sat seated in a comfortable sofa in the Foyer, alone with my vision fixed on the big black clock on the cyan blue wall. I had already surrendered my Wonderbolt Cadet uniform to the changing room and was now much less stuffy without a sweating suit of dyed leather.
This improved comfort and another glance at my now completely exposed body only served to remind me of what I stood to lose.
5:25, then 5:26 and soon 5:27.

What would happen when it reached 5:30 when I would be called to Spitfire's office where she claimed she would pass final sentence on what was to happen to me now that I had committed such a dangerous and careless stunt of dishonour.
I was never a pony known for expressing my weaker emotions. So it was all the more surprising when with every passing second my hoof began to vibrate more frantically, my eyes began to blink more uncontrollably and the air-conditioned room seemed to rise several degrees in temperature as a fountain of sweat came coated my skin forcing me to rub repeatedly at my forehead in a vain attempt to dry myself and maintain some degree of composure.

Yet even these horrible sensations would not compare with the news I was about to be presented with by a mentor who now wanted no part of her once favourite student.
But all my silent prayers served for nought as the hands on the clock finally slid to 5:30 and a set of footsteps begun to echo from the corridor beside me, quiet at first but gradually getting louder and louder.
As mum would have put it, time waited for no pony.