The New Recruit

Immediately after landing in the canyon city of San Palomino and having their pictures taken, Ace, Soarin, and four other Wonderbolts all filed into a conference room. Their teacher was a unicorn, which Ace thought a little bit odd, but not uncalled for. After all, he was an earth pony. If he could fly with the Wonderbolts, it stood to reason that a unicorn could teach them about general safety.

They all had to sign in, and as Ace did so, the teacher gave him a dirty look. He expected it, of course, as these supplemental classes were meant to take place after something went wrong, and Ace's signature was the only one he was required to collect. Soarin reminded him that almost every supplemental safety seminar took place right after an injury.

"Alright, if everypony could take their seats, let's begin. I wasn't given a report on the incident, so let's start at the beginning.

"Flight is a very complicated process. It may seem second nature to you, but there's a lot of small things that your brain just compensates for naturally. You can take off and land on instinct and muscle memory alone at this point, but there are some things that instinct can't account for."

He clicked his projector a few times, and showed then some of the most devastating air collisions of the last three decades. They were becoming less frequent, but the images would hit harder if the viewer remembered the events, and Ace certainly did remember a few of these. One, he'd even seen happen right in front of him. A hard shot at a Buckball game had resulted in both players being hospitalised. One with a bruised trachea, the other with a broken wing.

"Let's talk now about the greatest tool we have to prevent grievous injury: situational awareness. Little foals have tried showing off to their friends about how they can fly with their eyes closed, or backwards or blindfolded. It's a common theme that these injuries all started with the words "I can fly better than you." As Wonderbolts; as adults, you should already know the importance of watching where you're flying. Princess Twilight once recounted how her flight instructor was able to anticipate problems before they could happen because of her acute situational awareness. So many accidents are buttressed by the words "I didn't see you there." If you had seen them, you may have been able to avoid them.

"But let's assume that you did see them in time. Maneuverability should come naturally to a Wonderbolt, such as yourselves. Changing course and moving out of the way should come easy. But just because you saw somepony in the way and dodged out of their path does not mean you're out of danger. How many wagons swerved to avoid hitting somepony that stepped out onto the road only to end up overturned in a gutter? How many pulled aside to avoid a pedestrian and hit a wagon going to other way? How many stopped short and were rear-ended by another wagon that couldn't have seen the danger or stopped in time? Just keeping your focus on what's in front of you isn't enough. Peripheral vision is imperative."

He clicked the slides forward as he went. Crashed wagons were far more common, but this section ended with a Wonderbolt that had been performing solo stunts for a crowd, and had been thrown off by a duck flying across his path. To avoid the bird, he'd held his course down half a second too long, and his low fly had become a crash that broke his jaw. This was four years ago.

"Next, let's talk about your ground crew. The ponies that help you set everything up. They're going to be your best resource for avoiding mistakes. Why? Because it's their job to make sure that all of your equipment is working properly. They have to fix your equipment, they have to put all of the pieces back together when something breaks, and they're the ones setting up all of the safety harnesses and crash pads for new stunts. Treat them well, and they'll take good care of you.

"I'm talking of course about preparation and respect for your team. It's not just the pegasi in the sky that you need to worry about. The ponies on the ground, be they stylists, mechanics, repairponies, coordinators or medics are all there to make sure you fly smoothly, easily, and most important, safely. If one of the ground team says you have a damaged valve on your cloud generator, that's not an insult. If your mane stylist says you need goggles because your mane is too long, it's probably true. They're not trying to throw you off your game. They're concerned for your safety."

The next slide was an old one; a safety report from twenty-three years ago. Four different ground crew mechanics had inspected a dizzitron and noted that the stopper bolt was cracked and needed replacing. It was their job to replace the part, sure, but the parts had to be ordered, and the treasurer at the time was going for a record in their fiscal year, and had just kept pushing it down the line to save as much money as possible. When the stopper bolt broke, the dizzitron had kept spinning until it broke apart. Pieces had flown into the crowd , resulting in twelve hospitalisations and three fatalities. A new stopper bolt at the time would have set them back twenty-eight bits. The repair, medical and funeral expenses were just shy of ten thousand.

For the next forty minutes, the instructor talked about all sorts of things in reference to safety. Harnesses, integrity, discipline, teamwork and medical fitness exams, Ace was expecting to hear about. He wasn't expecting to be lectured on the dangers of anisakiasis or staphylococcal gastroenteritis, nor was he expecting a scabies lesson, but they happened. After all, the Wonderbolts weren't immune to disease, and constantly scratching a rash in front of a crowd and vomiting up nematodes was not a good look for them.

After the lectures, they were each given two packets, one of which they had to fill out then and there to verify that they had listened to and understood the lecture, and the other that could be brought back to their trailer and would cover all of the information again at their leisure. The test was incredibly easy, and Ace even noted a small flaw in one of the questions. It listed a good number of symptoms and asked what illness was being presented, and due to unclear wording, it looked more like norovirus than staphylococcus aureus, but norovirus wasn't an option. To be fair, the two presented in very similar ways. It was hard to tell them apart.