Scootaloo Discovers Flight

Scootaloo sat at the top of a high cliff, feeling the wind blow through her mane, and catch in the feathers of her undersized wings. She looked at the valley far below.

It sure was a long way down. If she fell all the way to the bottom, she didn't think there would be much left of her. Hardly even enough for the wild animals to eat, if they could find the pieces.

Scootaloo watched, and waited.

After about an hour, the view had changed. The formerly clear sky was spotted with clouds. One of the clouds even touched the cliff.

Scootaloo checked the straps on her backpack. She took a deep breath, walked away from the cliff's edge, and turned around. Scootaloo ran as fast as she could, straight at the empty space with the cloud below it.

She didn't even look down. She ran right over the edge. When her hooves met...nothing? She didn't panic. She knew that as a pegasus, she could walk on clouds. All she had to do was...

...wait...

...as the air rushed past her...

...her wings instinctively spread, tried to catch the air...slowing her fall?

No, the air rushed past even faster. Her wings were just too small.

The air ruffled her feathers and fur, caught her mane and tail, pulling, tugging...

It was only a few seconds. But while it lasted, it seemed like forever.

When Scootaloo's body hit the soft, fluffy cloud, she rolled to try to take up some of the impact. She felt herself sink partway into the cloud, but she didn't fall all the way through.

Thank Celestia.

Scootaloo looked in every direction, all across the cloudtop. It was a big one. A wide, open space. Plenty of cloud to work with.

Scootaloo took off her backpack, and unzipped it. If anypony had watched her jump, they probably would have expected her to have a parachute inside.

But Scootaloo wasn't like other ponies. When she reached into her pack, she pulled out two oblong objects, shaped like blunt, distorted cones. They were the front and back ends she'd sawed off a broken kayak. Scootaloo had filed and sanded the cut edges to smooth them, to keep them from fraying her backpack's fabric or damaging anything else.

Anything streamlined enough to speed through the water, she'd thought, should be streamlined enough to speed through air, too.

Scootaloo had visited Rainbow Dash's house many times, and Cloudsdale too. She'd even taken a class in Cloudsdale, on cloud house construction. Most pegasi who'd watched the tiny-winged pegasus, learning how to build by using the clouds she couldn't even fly up to on her own? They'd probably thought she was crazy.

Scootaloo gathered up soft cloud material with her hooves and wings, rolling it into a long, stout cylinder. It was much like one of the columns that held up Rainbow's porch roof...or the columns that supported half the porches and gables in Cloudsdale, for that matter.

Even though Scootaloo's wings weren't large enough to fly with, her natural pegasus magic still let her mold and shape cloudstuff just like any other pegasus could.

Scootaloo had learned how to infuse her pegasus magic into small objects, to ensure a cloud house would support them as securely as possible. (Pegasi who neglected to learn and practice these skills sometimes found empty spaces where their heaviest possessions HAD been, after the weighty things slowly sank through the cloud floor, and fell to the ground far below.) Scootaloo rubbed each kayak end with her wings, and with her hooves, charging it up with pegasus cloud-stiction magic. She thrust the kayak front onto one end of her cloudhouse column, surrounding the column's tip. She shaped and smoothed the junction between column and kayak scrap, making everything fit as well as she could.

Scootaloo lifted the capped column a few hoofwidths above the main cloudtop. The cloud column floated there, hovering in place.

She pushed the kayak rear section onto the column's other end. She fitted and smoothed the cloud to make the junction good.

Finally, Scootaloo dug carefully into the column's center. She created an inner compartment large enough to hold her lower torso and her filly-short hindlegs.

The pegasus filly shaped and smoothed, wanting to make the structure as strong as possible, both inside and out.

Countless times, Scoots had seen cloud houses support pegasi. She'd seen smaller clouds support her friend Rainbow Dash, who napped on a soft cloud almost every day.

Scootaloo had seen tiny clouds support natural flyers smaller than ponies: usually ducks and other birds.

But would the cloud kayak work?

Or would it prove too small to support the filly? Would it sink? If it sank, how fast? Would it only drift downwards, or plummet?

But EVEN IF the odd boatlike thing she'd constructed wasn't quite enough to float her? She thought if she used her inadequate wings to help support SOME of her weight, the craft MIGHT not drop so fast that the fall would kill her if she struck the ground.

But she hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Scootaloo glanced over at the cliff. If she wanted to try this while the main cloud still touched the cliff, she'd better get started now.

The pegasus climbed up onto her reshaped column, and into the compartment she'd sculpted to fit her own body. The cloud kayak bobbed with her motion, but it didn't seem to sink, and didn't break.

Scootaloo cheered loudly. She buzzed her wings a little, and the kayak moved forward. She buzzed one wing at a time, making the kayak turn left, then right.

Scootaloo leaned back, raising the kayak's nose. She buzzed one wing vigorously, and the other wing not quite as much. The kayak's path curved through the air, tracing an upward spiral.

Scootaloo buzzed her kayak up higher than the clifftop, and darted towards the place from which she'd leaped. Scootaloo shot directly above the rock-studded grass from which she'd started her cloud adventure.

Scootaloo laughed with delight. From now on, just about any pegasus with a wing defect like hers would be able to fly. She said, "I'm just one pegasus filly, making my very first flight. But I conquer the air for thousands of other pegasi like me, who will join me in the sky. Maybe someday, I'll be able to fly even faster than a Wonderbolt." Scootaloo wondered...if she invented a good enough cloud kayak, and trained and practiced for enough years...might she one day do a sonic rainboom?

Scootaloo buzzed her wings again. She could hardly wait to show Rainbow Dash!

Scootaloo squinted in the sunlight. What was that tiny blue speck, in the sky far away? Was that Rainbow? Had the grownup pegasus guessed that Scootaloo had sneaked off to try some dangerous experiment, and come to look for her?

Scootaloo waved one forelimb, and shouted as loud as she could. "I'm flying!" she shouted. "I'm flying! I can do it!"

In that moment, the battle between Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer reset the timeline again, rewriting history.

Nopony would ever remember how Scootaloo had discovered flight.