The New Recruit

Ace watched closely as Poinsettia rounded the course. It had been reorganised since he'd asked Bub to walk him through it, so he needed to rethink his plan, at least slightly. After Poinsettia, some of the girls that had giggled at him were sent through, and then Spitfire started listing off names in alphabetical order. The fastest was Blitz Break, with a time of 43.6 seconds. Not an academy record, as that was held by Rainbow Dash at 12.3 seconds, but it was still fast, as nopony else had spent less than a minute.

Ace, however, was moved down the list, to last place. Not because of the mares making fun of him at the beginning, but because Spitfire believed that he would take the longest, which would possibly bar other students from being able to complete the course. She said that right to his face, too. But what she didn't say was that she thought he couldn't do it. In fact, when she escorted him to the edge, what she whispered to him was "Show me that tenacity, cadet."

She stood at the edge, ready to catch him if he fell, as this was a place where he could potentially fall to his death if nopony were watching. Of course, there were two others, regularly posted so as to catch a pegasus that injured their wing, but if Ace fell, there was no guarantee that he could stabilise himself. She was going to take the extra caution.

With a deep breath to steel himself, Ace took a few steps back, then bolted forward as fast as his hooves could take him, leaping from the edge of the starting platform onto the first obstacle. He was supposed to pass through eight rings in an S-bend. Everypony else had flown through them, but he physically could not, and had to leap between them. They were only about twenty centimetres wide, and quite round, but he managed to make it through to the last one with little issue.

Next would have been a slalom through horizontal beams, but instead, it was moving pillars. Rather than testing his ability to shift directions vertically, he was being tested on lateral spatial awareness, or rather, everypony else was. The goal of this obstacle was to reach the other end without being knocked out of the field of play, and Ace had a plan.

As he leapt onto the first pillar, though, his hoof slipped, and he started to plummet, just barely catching himself at the bottom of the pillar. His heart started to race, as for half a second, he truly believed that he was about to die. Apparently, so had Spitfire, as he could see her folding her wings back behind her. She was going to leap after him.

He climbed back up the pillar, which was no mean feat, considering that it was still moving. Once he reached the top, he aimed himself at where the next pillar was going to be and grabbed it, sliding down just a bit, but nothing so drastic as before. These were a little bit slippery, apparently.

After working his way across the pillars, the stationary horizontal beams were next. He landed on the first one to catch his breath, then leapt to the second, swinging underneath it, propelling him with enough force to land on the third. Then the fourth and fifth, the sixth and seventh, and the eighth and ninth. The tenth was going to be a problem. He had to go under it, and then there was nothing to land on, as there was no eleventh beam. Well, not a stationary one, anyway.

He looked ahead. The rotary beams were next, and then the moving beams. Then a stationary pillar slalom, and then a second rotary beam in the opposite direction. He took a moment to breathe, then leapt for and swung from the tenth beam, flying toward the next obstacle.

He hit his knees, meaning he'd let go of the tenth beam too late, but that slowed him enough to grab on and come back around. He had to wait for the beam to return to a semi-flat position before he could leap to the next one, and after riding the third around, he'd managed to figure out the pace and speed through the next seven without issue.

He had to ride the last one around in a complete circle before he could leap to the moving beam, as he could not land on a target he could not reach. He had to jump when the current beam had him at the top, and the target beam was at the bottom. It was a hard landing and, had he landed poorly, he would have injured himself, but instead, it just hurt a bit. Soreness was not as bad as bruising, as he could work it out in the sauna at the end of the day, if it was even still a problem.

The moving beams were like the moving pillars, in that he just had to make it to the end. He could time his jumps fairly easily, and he was past them in no time at all, and the slalom of pillars was easy enough, considering that they weren't very slippery. He didn't even mess up his landing on the rotary beams this time, meaning he just had to leap down the beams as they came up, and he landed safely at the finishing platform.

"Three minutes, twenty-eight point zero seconds," noted Spitfire. "Not bad, cadet."

"Not bad?" argued another cadet. "Nopony else lasted longer than two minutes, and you said my performance was pitiful! You're not being fair!"

Spitfire turned to look at him, and with an evil smile, she conceded. "You know what, cadet? You're right. You can try again, and we'll make your new time your official score, and the time to beat. How's that sound?"

"Very fair, ma'am." He took his position and stretched his wings, but within seconds, they were strapped to his sides by a belt. "Hey!"

"You wanted fair," noted Spitfire. "You think his time was bad? Let's see you beat the course the same way he did, with no wings."

He and seven other cadets all tried it, and only one of them managed to make it to the beams. Every single one of them fell off, and would have plummeted to their deaths without the rescue teams standing by. Not one of them could beat the course with Ace's handicap. Rather, if they could, they weren't stepping forward.