Dash's Secret Diary

Dash's Secret Diary

by Twippledash

Chapter 4: Audition

Oh. My. Gosh!

I'm so excited I can barely write this!

Okay, so what happened today... Early this afternoon I was resting in my house, having a little break after disposing of the clouds from last night's downpour as I heard somepony knocking at my front door. I was quite surprised, and a little bit worried—I rarely get any unexpected visitors, and even then those visitors are usually bringing bad news like telling me one of my friends had gotten hurt or that I had forgotten something important or whatever—but I went to answer the door anyway.

Whatever I expected, it definitely wasn't this. There was a fiery-maned yellow pegasus mare standing at my house's entrance. She was one of my idols and I'd recognize her anywhere, even though she wasn't wearing her usual outfit that time.

That's right. The captain of the Wonderbolts, Spitfire, was on my doorstep just to meet me!

I think I lost my ability to think coherently for a few moments, only thing I could say at the moment was just blurting 'Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!' like a brainless idiot. Luckily Spitfire was used to that kind of behavior from her fans and didn't think any less of me because of it, saying that it was a perfectly normal reaction for any fanatic Wonderbolt fan unexpectedly meeting their idol.

The best part is yet to come still. She wasn't just on any casual visit; she said they were looking for new members for the Wonderbolts and she actually had an official invitation for me to perform in their audition in Cloudsdale a month from now! Though she reminded me that I am not guaranteed to be a Wonderbolt yet as there will be dozens of other candidates too, and only a maximum of four or so can get in. Despite that Spitfire also mentioned that I actually had really good chances to pass the test judging by my earlier performances she had been witnessing! But she also warned that I shouldn't let overconfidence to take over myself, that had apparently ruined the attempts of many promising fliers in the past.

I got to stop for a moment, I'm too excited to even write anything!

Okay, took a little break squealing like a fanfilly and flying a few loops around my house to expel the excess of my excitement. Much better now.

So, after the formal matters Spitfire had an hour of free time to just hang out. Not as a fan and an idol, but as friends. We had met several times before, but that was actually the first time I really got to hang out with her personally for more than just a minute or so. Yes, she was there with the other Wonderbolts after I won the Best Young Flier Competition, but I didn't really get a chance to talk with her much that day. She was also in the Grand Galloping Gala and the Royal Wedding, but in both of those cases she was constantly being pulled away by some attention hogs as well as her being surrounded by other ponies most of the time, so I didn't get any opportunity to talk with her long enough to really get to know her.

But now I had a full hour with her without any other ponies constantly interrupting! And she was just as awesome as I have always thought she was! We also had a common interest in stunt flying, so starting a conversation was really no trouble at all. After sharing some awesome tricks with each other she even challenged me for a race! I would never turn down a challenge—especially since she was one of the few pegasi who could actually have any chance against me in a flying race—so a race we had.

Since I was the one being challenged, I got to set the race route. I ended up choosing a long, straight line from my porch to a hilltop about three miles from Ponyville. I knew the simple route without any sharp turns would likely be in my favor, and I'm sure Spitfire noticed that also even if she didn't mention it. But then again, for me stunt flying is still just a hobby, while she has already been a professional full-time stunt flier for years.

So we set on the start line on my porch next to each other, ready to take off. She counted down from three to zero and then we were off. The first thing I noticed was that she was already speeding way ahead of me when I had barely lifted my hooves off the porch—she somehow managed to accelerate to her top speed in a flash! I could see air resistance building in front of her, but she wasn't accelerating anymore, she seemed to be stuck with subsonic speeds. Very soon I managed to match her speed, but I was still way behind. But unlike her, I still kept accelerating and soon noticed the very familiar cone of air resistance forming around my body, getting thinner and thinner as my velocity was steadily increasing. It tried to push me back with incredible forces, but I refused to give up and still accelerated...

Until finally the barrier perished—creating a sonic rainboom as a side effect—and I was flying at supersonic speeds once again! Spitfire was still ahead of me, but the distance was now quickly getting shorter and shorter. Just a few hundred feet from the finish line I managed to bypass her, and less than a second later I crossed the finish line as the winner!

It's still hard to believe that I won the captain of the Wonderbolts in a righteous race! Sure I set the rules, but it was still impressive even if I say it myself!

The fact that she lost a race against me doesn't make me think any less about her though, I still admire her skills as a flier. She was fast. And by fast I mean really fast. And her ability to accelerate so quickly was outright amazing! If the track had been slightly shorter or if it had any sharp turns, she would have beaten me without a hitch. She has been a professional stunt flier for years after all. Anyway, she was a good sport and didn't hold any grudges, even congratulating me for my victory.

Soon after our race she had to leave, and I immediately went to tell my friends that I'm going to have a Wonderbolt audition in a month. As expected, they all congratulated me and Pinkie threw a 'Rainbow Dash is a Wonderbolt candidate' party.

That's everything for now, this morning has been totally awesome! Now I'm off with my afternoon training session. I have to keep myself in a good shape for the Wonderbolts after all.

Oh, did I already mention I'm truly excited about this all? Because I totally am!

—The soon-to-be-Wonderbolt Rainbow Dash

P.S. The invitation letter says that I can also bring up to six other ponies to watch my performance. Fluttershy will be just about a month away from giving birth by the time of the audition, so she'll likely have to stay home. But I'm sure my other friends will gladly be there (with the help of Twilight's cloud walking spell of course), and Scootaloo would definitely like to be there too. Then there would still be one place open... Oh well, I'll see if I can find somepony to fill that spot.

"Seems like you were quite excited about that whole 'meeting Spitfire and getting into Wonderbolt audition' thing," Scootaloo said jokingly.

"You bet I was!" Rainbow exclaimed. "That was probably one of the best days of my life I had lived so far, soon overshadowed by actually getting into the Wonderbolts of course. You didn't get a visit from the captain of the Wonderbolts and get invitation to the Wonderbolt audition every day. And for me it was like a dream come true, they had been my idols and I had been determined to join them ever since my parents brought me into one of their shows when I was just a little filly."

"Yeah, your obsession of Wonderbolts was really common knowledge among Ponyville," Scootaloo smirked rolling her eyes. "Whenever somepony even mentioned Wonderbolts withing your earshot, you were immediately there praising them and blabbering about how you would become a Wonderbolt one day."

Rainbow chuckled embarrassed. "I guess that's quite true, I was probably a bit too enthusiastic about them back then. But then again, I did get into the Wonderbolts eventually. And on my first audition, to boot."

The orange pegasus nodded. "I'm not arguing with that. About that audition, I guess it is coming next in the diary?"

Rainbow nodded and said before turning the page, "Yup. And I got a little carried away while writing it, so it will be quite a long entry."

Woohoo!!!

This is so awesome! The Wonderbolt audition was yesterday and I passed the test! That means I am now officially a Wonderbolt! Just a rookie though and not a full-fledged Wonderbolt yet. But once I pass the mandatory Wonderbolt training period, I will finally get into their performance team!

I can't really express my feelings on a paper well enough, so I'll just move onto describing what happened yesterday.

First of all, I could barely sleep the night before that day, being so nervous about the upcoming audition. Luckily I managed to get some rest nevertheless, so I wasn't like a few of the Wonderbolt candidates who were practically sleepwalking—or maybe sleepflying in this case—and likely failed their performances because of that. I can tell from personal experience that stunt flying and sleep deprivation together just does not work and never ends well.

The auditions started early afternoon and everypony had to be there by the noon, so I woke up a few hours prior to make sure I would be fully awake on time. I had also told the ponies accompanying me to get up early enough too. Rarity didn't want to join us, something about her having had enough of heights for at least several years—I can actually understand that, having been the one to save her from a free fall twice—so I could still take two ponies with me in addition to Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie, and Scootaloo. Fluttershy, as much as she wanted to come to cheer for me, had to stay home. So next I asked Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle whether they'd like to come, and while they were not as enthusiastic as Scootaloo, they were still glad to be of emotional support to me.

Once we all gathered together at the library, Twilight put cloud walking spell of each non-pegasus pony present and they packed together into Twilight's hot air balloon, which was already inflated on the backyard. The balloon's basket was crowded enough with the five earthbound ponies in it, so I and Scootaloo decided to fly by their side. We flew up to the Cloudsdale, still having more than an hour to get to the stadium. The cloud city wasn't really designed with non-flying ponies in mind, so Twilight steered the balloon close to the stadium and landed on a large cloud platform attached to it.

We secured the balloon so it wouldn't get caught by the wind and headed towards the stadium entrance. There was a long line of ponies already, and a pair of Wonderbolts—Soarin' and Fleetfoot—stood by the entrance to maintain order, check invitations, and allow ponies in one group at a time. In most cases it wasn't really hard to tell which ponies were here to perform and which were just as an audience; the nervousness and anxiousness was clearly visible on some ponies' attitude, me included. We got to the end of the queue and started waiting, chatting idly as the line slowly moved forward.

Our group got a few strange looks as we waited, it wasn't every day you got to see earth ponies or unicorns in Cloudsdale after all. I also noticed some ponies nearby talking about me and glancing at my direction now and then. One of them even came to talk to me and asked for an autograph! And she was followed by two other ponies who were apparently too bashful to take the initiative. Heh, I didn't know I already had some fans outside Ponyville! I guess being the only pony alive to perform sonic rainboom really gives me some reputation.

Anyway, about twenty minutes later we were at the entrance facing the pair of Wonderbolts standing there. They both immediately recognized and greeted me. Fleetfoot checked my name in a list of invited pegasi as Soarin' asked for the invitation letter with some additional info about me filled in. Twilight levitated said letter out of her saddlebag (I had given it to her for safekeeping as I myself tend to lose any loose papers lying around) for him to scrutinize. He nodded approvingly and allowed us to go in.

As we were passing the entrance Soarin' took a look at my company, stopping as she noticed Applejack. He suddenly looked a bit surprised asked her something like "Say, weren't you once selling apple products at the Grand Galloping Gala?" Applejack answered nodding and added bitterly that the one pie he bought was the only product she sold the whole night. His eyes brightened as she mentioned that pie, and he enthusiastically asked where he could find her to buy some more. Fleetfoot just chuckled at her comrade, it apparently was no secret within Wonderbolts that Soarin' had an obsession for pies. And he apparently occasionally talked about "that one apple pie" at the Gala. It seems like Applejack's got a new committed customer.

We couldn't really have any long chat as there was still some ponies in line behind us, so we walked into the entrance hall of the stadium. There we were greeted by Rapidfire, who directed us to the box seat reserved for our group. I could also stay there with my friends until they'll call for the contestants to gather together for the last-minute guidance before they start the auditions.

While we were waiting in the box, I recalled all the flying techniques and such I would probably need during the audition while listening to my friends' encouragements. About half past twelve Spitfire flew to the middle of the stage with a megaphone and announced all the contestants to come to the entrance hall. My friends gave me a good luck wish once again before I left the box.

In the entrance hall there was quite a crowd of pegasi, like forty or so, all about to try and impress the Wonderbolts trying to get accepted in. That was the time I really realized how much competition I had, and that only one tenth or so of that group would be accepted. Not to mention everypony there was hoof picked by the Wonderbolts themselves, hence each and every one of them would be at least a decent flier and the competition would be really tough. Even though I managed to fight the building anxiousness quite well, I'm sure it still showed if somepony looked close enough.

Spitfire gave us all general information about the audiences and gave us our randomly selected queue numbers. I was number 18. She asked us to stay there in the hall until our number was called up so we couldn't see each others' performances. With that she gave the first contestant fifteen minutes to prepare and exited to the main stage.

Soon they called for the first contestant, and a very nervous looking brown pegasus mare flew towards the stage and disappeared there. Even though the walls of the entrance hall were somewhat sound resistant, I could still easily hear roaring cheers greeting the first contestant entering the stage.

The cheering subsided, but raised once in a while for a short moment to encourage the current performer, until it finally reached its crescendo—the first performance had reached its end.

They soon called in the next one, and for each contestant the routine was repeated with just a slight variance now and then. I watched as the crowd got smaller and smaller, my nervousness growing as the amount of ponies performing before me decreased. As only about half of the pegasi were left, it was finally my turn.

I swallowed hard, exited the waiting room, and flew into the stage.

I was greeted by nearly ear deafening cheers from all around the stage. I looked around and noticed my friends cheering loudly in the same box seat I was with them before. There were two Wonderbolts sitting in the judges' booth on the other end of the stadium, and four other Wonderbolts scattered around the edges of the stage to get better view of each performance. From what I was told before either in the invitation letter on in person, they had three tests for each contestant. The first two were designed to test our speed, agility, and precision, while the third one would be a short freeform performance.

First was slaloming through a line of cloud columns, that was familiar routine for me back from the Best Young Flier Competition. Luckily it went better this time, and I passed the route without a hitch and with a great time to boot. Roaring cheers greeted my ears as I finished, shaking away most of the nervousness I still had in my mind. Glance back at the box holding my friends increased my confidence even more, seeing them all practically jumping up and down cheering for me really warmed my heart.

But that was just the first task. Next I had to fly trough a zigzagging race course they had marked with cloud rings. It had some nasty turns and curves, and I'm quite sure I accidentally touched one of the rings with my left wing while doing a sharp turn. I knew that was definitely going to count against me in the end, but I let it slide and continued doing my best hoping that my freeform performance would counter it well enough. Crossing of the finish line made the crowd erupt into roaring cheers once again.

Next was the final task—freeform.

I think it is needless to say that my performance includes sonic rainboom as a part of it, that being my signature trick and all.

So, I started by flying up several hundred feet and stopped. I looked down to the stadium deciding that was enough distance, and then started accelerating back towards the stage. Breaking the sound barrier had really become a routine to me already, so I felt totally confident that I could pull it of. Hardest part was to get the timing right and to steer once flying with supersonic speeds. I felt the familiar feeling of air resistance building in front of me, and once I was about fifty feet above the stadium, I broke the sound barrier with a thundering boom creating a horizontally expanding rainbow colored ring above the audience.

But I didn't end there. I kept spinning in vertical circles below the initial sound barrier breaking point, tilting my angle a bit between each round. With the rainbow trail behind me I formed a giant rainbow colored sphere in the middle of the stage.

Once I finished my trick, I flew on place right above the glimmering sphere I had just created, feeling truly relieved that my last trick had worked out as intended. As I mentioned, the audience's cheering earlier was loud. But it was nothing compared to what I got after finishing that last trick, I should probably consider myself lucky that my eardrums were still intact after the cheering subsided.

Once the rainbow sphere had already vanished, I was asked to move to another waiting room for the rest of the performances as the next contestant was called in. We who had already finished our performances couldn't watch the rest performing simply because it would be unfair for the last ones not to see any performances, and also because it would make following performers more nervous because of other competitors watching.

Once I arrived to the waiting room, the first question one of the competitors asked me was "What was that huge explosion we heard?" Before I could say anything, another competitor already answered that it was a sonic rainboom. When I asked how she knew, she just said that she'd seen me before in the Best Young Flier Competition.

A chatter filled the waiting room. One group was lamenting that they had no chance against that, some other group was cursing that they had missed a legendary sonic rainboom, some were still confident that their performances were better, and the rest were just indifferent.

The talking subsided quickly and silence fell over the place once again, with just occasional question asked from others and such. I waited there with the ever growing amount of pegasi for hours, not really knowing how the Wonderbolts would grade our performances, and how well I managed against the others. And I could tell that most of the others seemed to be thinking about the same thing.

Finally the last contestant finished, and twenty minutes later Spitfire came in to call us all back to the stage to hear the results of their evaluations. Everypony complied silently, too afraid to say anything anymore until hearing the results. We arranged on a row facing the judges' booth onto a cloud platform set in the middle of the stage.

Spitfire started by saying that all the performances were well above average and that nopony should take rejection personally, for they all were still great fliers. But due to the Wonderbolts being an elite stunt flier team, they could only accept the best of the best into the Wonderbolts. She said that after intense and hard time evaluating and comparing our results they had finally come to the decision to take four new members into the Wonderbolts.

She announced the names of those accepted pegasi one at a time, each time a roaring cheer was heard from the audience as the said pegasus stepped in front of our row to accept a diploma from Rapidfire who was standing next to Spitfire carrying said diplomas.

As three other pegasi had already been announced—I can't remember their names off the top of my head, but I'm sure to get to know them later—I could feel sweat running on my face, fearing that I might have not passed. That was until Spitfire finally announced my name! My mood brightened instantly and I stepped forward to take my righteous place as a new Wonderbolt. I took my diploma from Rapidfire and walked next to the the other accepted candidates to add myself into their row.

Spitfire dismissed the rest of the pegasi still standing in the row I was standing in just a moment ago, reminding that they could still try their skills in future auditions and that they all were still capable enough to join other stunt flier groups with slightly lower admission requirements. She also mentioned that Soarin' would be at the exit giving out free tickets to future Wonderbolt shows as a consolation prize to brighten their mood a little.

After the others had left, we were introduced to our new teammates—that is, all the Wonderbolts who took part in the audition event. We were also given some general information of when and where they will start our training. First meeting was scheduled two months from now in the Wonderbolt headquarters, in Canterlot.

After that we were also dismissed and free to go, so I fetched my friends and we walked at Twilight's balloon together. We flew back to Ponyville, chatting happily as my friends were practically burying me in praises. Once we landed, Pinkie immediately arranged a 'Rainbow Dash is a Wonderbolt!' -party in the Sugarcube Corner. Before attending the party I had one more important thing to do though; tell the great news to Fluttershy and Rarity! And as expected I received congratulations from both as a response.

Nothing really interesting happened during the rest of the day, Pinkie's party was just like they always are; exhausting, but fun. It was already quite late as the party started and it lasted long into the night, so after leaving the party I flew straight to my cloud house and despite my excitement fell asleep almost immediately.

Phew... That was a lot of writing...

—Wonderbolt Rainbow Dash

"Wow, that was quite a long entry," the orange mare deadpanned.

"Like I said." Rainbow grinned.

"And practically all you said here was that you were accepted into the Wonderbolts," Scootaloo said.

"Well... Yeah, I guess you're right. But once I started with my long descriptions of that day I just couldn't stop. Besides, I remember that writing it was actually quite fun."

"It was also enjoyable to read it, to see that day from your viewpoint. And I'm really glad you made it into the Wonderbolts that day," Scootaloo said glancing at the wall with numerous posters and photos featuring a rainbow maned pegasus in a blue Wonderbolt outfit. Her face drifted on the framed paper on Rainbow's trophy stand. She nodded at that direction and asked, "By the way, is that the original diploma you mentioned in the diary?"

"That's the one." Rainbow nodded and looked up at said diploma. "Even if it is quite much worthless by itself being just a general acceptance diploma template with my name written on it, it is still the only thing I have left from that life-changing day. And it holds many wonderful memories, so I decided to frame and preserve it."

"Yeah, I also have kept some things reminding me of my past, but you already knew that anyway," Scootaloo said and looked back at the diary. After a moment of silence she smirked and said, "You did mention yourself being nervous quite much the whole time, but I think you are still understating it a bit here..."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

The orange mare just shrugged and said, "If I recall correctly, you were shaking like a leaf in your nervousness the day before the audition. Not to mention the time we arrived to the stadium the next day, you looked like you could collapse any second there."

The cyan pegasus blushed a little and cleaned her throat. That was true of course. Before joining the Wonderbolts she always had a bad case of stage fright whenever she knew her performance was being judged closely, and that combined with her anxiousness that one day made her really nervous. "I wasn't the only nervous pony there though. You should have seen the other ponies in the waiting room before their performances, some of them were practically curled in a corner and shaking uncontrollably."

"Like you were before in the Best Young Flier Competition, if what Rarity had told me was right?"

Rainbow's blush deepened as she cleared her throat once again and looked away. "Um... let's change the subject, shall we?"

"Aw, can't you take a little teasing? Besides, I guess we are now even in terms of making each other embarrassed," Scootaloo quipped but complied anyway. "So, anything you liked to add on your audition, or should we just move on?"

"I guess that is quite much covered for now," Rainbow said getting back to a cheerful mood. "I think you already guessed what is coming next?"

Scootaloo smiled. "If it has something to do with a certain yellow pegasus mare who is not a Wonderbolt, a big yet gentle earth pony stallion, and some cute little filly, then I think I have a quite good idea what it is about..."

Rainbow gave a short laugh and said, "Seems like you got it right." With that she turned the page.