Glorified

We stayed at the park until dusk so I could recover. It took a lot longer than expected, but once I was capable of movement again, we returned to my house. After having a late dinner, we parted, and I had some thinking to do.

While I wouldn’t say no to what happened, It wasn’t something I wanted done in a public park parking lot. Also, not sure I could live up to ‘everywhere all the time’ if that was just the beginning. We're gonna need a place to be where we can be alone together, and that is going to require finding one.

I asked Mom and Dad about it, and they said they’d ask the Ponyville real estate mogul herself, Princess Twilight, about getting me a place. Because it’s the Princess, they said I’ll probably have a house or something ready to move into next weekend. Of course, I really don’t know what exactly I want in a house, much less what Cheesette wants, so that was the next day’s discussion.

Cheesette still works part-time at the café, so it would need to be relatively close to the café in District 18. Mom’s fear of the airports and stories of tragedies involving pegasi and giant planes have me spooked enough that I don’t want to be closer to those, and Grandma Downy still lives in District 39, next to the airport in the district north of Cheesy Pie Café, and I don’t want to live near that either. The best choices would either be in District 4 or 5, but living in the inner ring would be so incredibly expensive that my Wonderbolt salary might not cut it.

We went through the pros and cons of most of the nearby Districts around the second ring of Ponyville and eventually came to the conclusion that District 21, which was due east of her parents and north-east of mine would be the best spot. We could have a decently sized house, our own space with a low chance of running into our parents without deliberately doing so, and maybe one or two rooms to start with. The family is likely to be very big, but just in case something happens, I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

Once that was done and we had lunch, it was time for me to be getting back to Cloudsdale. After a flight that felt much longer than it should’ve been, I got back to Cloudsdale, grabbed some fast food, ate and passed out. She’d sucked a piece of my soul out on Saturday because that evening was all I could think about. The weekend couldn’t come soon enough.

Of course, when morning came, I got a knock on the door and had to find a way to deal with my ‘problem.’ Since I wasn’t required to be up at six on the dot, I left my blanket on and got the door that way.

“Yes?” I asked as I opened the door.

The captain raised a brow at me but didn’t bother asking. “Get ready for the day, I need to talk to you.”

I’m pretty sure she knew what was happening here, and the embarrassment was crushing. “Uh, yes, Ma’am.”

“My office in ten minutes.”

“Yes, captain!” I saluted.

The blanket fell off.

She looked to the side. She acknowledged nothing and walked away.

I died a little against the closed door.

After calming down with a quick, cold shower, I suited up and made my way to the Captain’s office. She was at her desk this morning and offered me a chair. I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eyes. For her part, she just picked up a tablet and looked at that.

“This week, I want you to work with our lazy boys and Trade Wind.”

I tried not to show my disdain. “All four of them at the same time?”

She glanced up at me quickly. “This isn’t a lance inspection, Prism.”

I died a lot more inside.

“You clearly know how to train ponies, and I want speed drawn out of them like you did for Monsoon. She went from not clearing your rally course to clearing several in a week. I’ll be taking her and Pigeonhole to do some more tests this week, mostly to get that featherbrain turning right in time for the race on the 19th, but I want to see similar improvements in them.”

After recovering from the image of Trade Wind on a couch with the four of us behind her, I said, “Are you sure it’s a good idea to have them all together like this?”

Spitfire rolled her eyes. “The divas will learn to swim or sink. You’ll have Effie with you too if things get too out of hoof. She’ll be filming and they both know that if they’re caught fighting again they’ll both get fired.”

Mediation is not my strong suit. “Alright, sure. It’s just up to me how that happens, right?”

“Right. They haven’t been responding well to my usual tactics and though I could do without Nightingale and Typhoon, Trade Wind has a level of entertainer-producer talent that I haven’t seen on the Bolts before, and I’d like to keep her here. Siccoro is above average in performance too and his temperament is well suited for team work, but he’ll drop fast if he can’t keep up in the races.”

Can’t keep up? “Are you worried that he just doesn’t have the ability to be competitive?”

She bit her hoof and narrowed her eyes at her tablet. “Yes and no… I think the ability is there, but I just don’t think he or I know how to bring it out in him. A common trend in Wonderbolts is that amazing fliers come from amazing fliers, a prime example being yourself. Amazing fliers without amazing fliers to learn from are incredibly rare, but Siccoro is one of them. Kid didn’t need to be spotlighted to draw the whole crowd’s attention when he wanted it at the show the other day. He’s got the star power, just not the… experience, I suppose, of racing that he should have. It’s more of a ‘he doesn't know how’ than a ‘he can’t,’ ya know?”

“How did he get in if he doesn’t know how to race?”

Spitfire set her tablet down. “High test score, high performance score. His times were enough to pass, and everything else pushed him over the line. I don’t think I’d even call him an edge case, just somepony who would’ve made it regardless. The knuckleheads actually fly faster than him, but Nightingale is as dumb as a rock and only managed to get in on being the best performer out of the newbies period. If he wasn’t such a pain in the ass…”

She pressed on her brows. “Typhoon, I don’t have problems with other than that he’s lazy. Trade Wind is also lazy, but she’s a wizard with editing software. I’d have her as general staff, but it’d be such a waste to not have her on camera.” Then she clapped her hooves. “Oh, and I know you’re itching to continue your bloodline and all that, but it’s not gonna be a problem if I have you and Trade Wind be the face of our calendar this year, is it?”

Way to knock the wind out of my sails. “Can you let me talk to her about it before anything happens? Like, my Mom called my fiancé a yandere the other day, and now that it’s been said to my face, I’m kinda realizing how true that is.”

The captain blinked. “A yan-de-what?”

“Low self-esteem, very easily jealous, violently vindictive—especially toward mares.”

“The mare you’re… marrying this weekend?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Spitfire blinked and took a breath. “Oh-kay. Yeah, you talk to her, but make sure she knows that the money that will put your kids through school is coming from our sponsor who wants you and Trade Wind on that calendar.”

“Translated into plain language, that means this is already a done deal and she’s just gonna have to go along with it, right?”

Spitfire nodded grimly. “Correct.”

I covered my eyes with my hooves and took a deep breath. “Okay. How weird is this gonna get?”

“Don’t make me explain what the calendar is to you. You’re a teenage male, I’m sure you know.”

Oh, I know, alright. I saw Mom in one once and never again looked at another. “That’s… what I thought. I’ll do what I can, but I would advise Trade Wind to not go near central Ponyville when that calendar goes out.”

Spitfire threw her hooves up. “And that’s your mare? Forever, the one and only, the love of your life?”

“Yes, it’s kinda hot! And for my life and career to be long, this kind of thing needs to not happen! What are they gonna have us do?”

Spitfire put her elbow on the table and stared at me blankly. “You’ve seen a calendar, haven’t you?”

I’ve done more than ‘seen’ a calendar. Wet, oiled up, in bathing suits, in uniform, in sexy poses. “I have.”

“Then I don’t need to tell you anything more. Every team from every branch does one, and you and her move product. That’s all there is to it.”

Pain, true pain. “Was Dad in a calendar?”

“Dash was in one too.”

It seems I’ve died yet again. “Yep, that checks out.”

“Look, I was in a calendar too when I was young. We all do our time with the calendar, and the bonus you get for it can be significant.” She looked at her tablet again. “Anyways, time’s up. I know you can do it, so show me results.”

I sighed. “Yes, Captain.”

Monsoon and Pigeonhole had problems with technique. Monsoon has the drive to improve on her own, so once she does get all the technique down, she’ll be fine. Pigeonhole is a workaholic, so if it’s assigned to him to ‘learn’ something, he’ll just do it. In all honesty, they were probably the easiest ponies for me to work with at the start.

The group in front of me, however, I really doubt.

“Why does she keep pairing me up with you groupies?” Nightingale complained.

“Because your dumb ass doesn’t know how to shut up!” Effie shot back.

The red stallion glared at Effie and we both glared back at him. Conventionally attractive was correct, but that didn’t make me like him any more.

He kept his dignified hoof up to his chest. “Well, I—”

“No, stop, shut up, actually.” This was going to be a long morning. I turned to Effie. “Do you know if we have any altitude-training masks?”

“You think you can muzzle me!?” he shot.

I stomped up to him. “I’m the vice captain! You follow my orders, or you leave!” I threw a hoof out to the open sky around the rally track. “The air is open! Go anywhere but here!”

Veins stood out on the red stallion's neck. He was close, so close to being gone forever, but by some miracle I suppose, he let his face drop.

I felt like I was losing my chance to be rid of this guy, so I leaned in and asked, “Are we clear, Nightingale?”

To my dismay, he said, “Yes, vice captain,” quietly.

This close, this close and he actually somehow managed to follow orders. Damn it.

Trade Wind giggled. “Wow, Prism, I didn’t know you had that in you!”

I looked at her face, then her chest, then her flanks. No wonder Cheesette felt threatened by you. “Yeah, sure. I don’t like doing it, so please don’t make me yell, guys.”

Typhoon chuckled. “No worries, dude, I’m here to be compliant.”

I didn’t like him reveling in me yelling at Nightingale, either. “Cool, don’t be a kiss ass.”

And smiles traded from blue to red stallion.

Siccoro stepped up. “This is actually gonna go nowhere if we don’t just start. What are we doing today, VC?”

He’s my favorite. I’d set back up the first rally track I used for Monsoon. “Did any of you see me working with Monsoon and Pigeonhole last week?”

The green stallion tilted his head. “We might’ve flown by while the Instructor was threatening to literally whip us if we didn’t fly faster. What’s all this stuff set up here?”

My mind was genuinely blown. “Have you… never been on a rally track?”

He shook his head. “No, sir.”

Trade Wind popped her pretty face next to him. “That’s impressive! Wasn’t the rally track part of the exam? I know I had to run one to join the team back in April.”

Slowly, he shook again. “No, I never did that. I did a regular race and won that, killed a routine, and I thought the exam was pretty easy all things considered. They didn’t call me again until I’d made the team.”

I looked to Effie for help. “Is that normal?”

The violet mare affirmed. “Yes. If you score high enough in any three categories, you get a spot on the team. This group is relatively small for what we usually get on C-team, but the instructors can pick and choose what they have you do depending on your performance. If they didn’t see a need for you to go on the rally track, that means you did well enough on everything else.”

“You know,” Trade Wind began, “rallies have fallen out of favor in the ratings for Wonderbolt events in the last ten years anyways. We have less of them as a general rule now. They’re usually over so fast that it’s hard for ponies to get invested. Longer events keep ponies more engaged, and turnover is always best in anything that lasts more than two hours. The longest rally is only ever an hour and a half, and that’s when it’s a big college event.”

That makes sense, I suppose. Rallies are quick, and I could run most tracks in under two minutes when I was really gunning for it. You’d have to have at least twenty ponies to make a rally go longer than an hour, and that’s a little less than two average Wonderbolt teams. Guess that's why they switched to whole city track rallies a little after I was born.

Wait a minute, did he just say he won his race? “You placed first in your race, Siccoro?”

He nodded his leafy head. “Yeah. The Las Pegasus track was set up like a rollercoaster when my group ran it. A lot of ponies struggled with the loop-de-loop section and I used to do that for fun back home.”

A loop-de-loop? Those are really terrible on your body. Going too fast into an upward swoop can make ponies blackout. The Las Pegasus instructor must be a little out there to make amateurs do that. I try to spin through loops rather than go straight into them. I wanna see him do it now.

I clapped my hooves. “So, Spitfire is complaining about your speed, all of you.”

Typhoon groaned. “Dude, please don’t make me fly laps.”

“I mean, I’m kinda gonna have you do laps, but I’m not gonna just make you fly in a circle as fast as you can.”

Trade Wind covered her muzzle. “I’m not against flying in circles, but I don’t know about doing that as fast as I can. We flew so many laps last week, and it never felt good to just be doing that. Races are usually a little more complex than just laps, right? I want something a little more exciting to do my best in.”

I really hate that she said that because I totally agree with her, but I still try to do my best in the hundred series. “Like, I get that, but we’re doing a 300 on the 19th. You’re gonna have to fly a lot of laps, quickly, if you want to catch any eyes.”

Finally breaking his silence, Nightingale said, “Catch eyes by flying in circles? It simply cannot be done! What is even remotely appealing about seeing a group of pegasi suffering like ants in a death spiral for three hours?”

I shrugged. “Position changes, upsets, crashes. Hundred series are a little hard to watch, but you can’t take your eyes away when you see a car crash on TV right? It’s about seeing who can last the longest and finish the set first. My mom still gets deals from her main sponsor because nopony has beaten her 500 record twenty years after she set it.”

I saw bit signs fill Trade Wind’s eyes. “For twenty years!? But your mom is Rainbow Dash, isn’t she? She stopped racing all the way back in 2008 after her big fall! How is she still getting sponsor deals? I thought getting married was the death of a Wonderbolt mare…”

“It’s not getting married,” Effie announced. “It’s getting pregnant. Mares never fly the same after they’ve had a kid. Even worse for mares who have mixed kids.”

Which was absolutely true, especially so in Mom’s case. Haze wasn’t exactly the biggest kid, but Mom’s back was bent while she carried him to term and her flying has definitely suffered for it.

“Mom still has, like, perfect form and all that, though. It was more tearing her wing that messed her up than it was my little brother, but she does fly a lot more crooked now than she used to. She still gets sponsorships from that marshmallow company, and she promotes them at races Ponyville Academy attends. The girl’s team didn’t have a record like mine, but they were still the number one high school team in the country for a few years straight. She’s a really good coach.”

“Dude!” Siccoro exclaimed. “Your mom is the mare on the rainbow marshmallow bag? I love those!”

News to me that anypony likes the fruity marshmallow flavors. “Yeah. I think the last package had the whole girl’s team on it with her since they’d won the national event.”

Trade Wind pursed her lips, rubbing her hooves together. “So I can have kids and still be marketable…”

Effie pointed a hoof in her face. “Don’t go throwing away your career! You could be a Wonderbolt for a decade first!”

The pretty mare smiled at the younger one. “If I find a stallion worth keeping, that’s probably it for me. Don’t count on me being here for a decade.”

Nightingale couldn’t believe his ears. “You would just… toss away your chance at fame and stardom for something as common as… as a child?”

Trade Wind snorted. “As if my kid would be anything close to common. I’m here because this was my quickest route to fame. It’s not the only one.”

Effie looked like she was about to blow a gasket, so I moved the conversation. “Anyways, you can make money, you can get sponsors, but you need to be fast on the less complex tracks too. Help me move some of the rings around. I want to see you all run this and I really want to see you guys to a loop-de-loop since Siccoro brought that up.”

The green stallion smiled. “Oh, for real? Those are my favorites, let’s go!”

I held a hoof up. “Right, but this is about speed, remember? Do the loop at the midpoint of the track as fast as you can.”

His brows fell. “Huh. That’s gonna be kinda rough.”

“Yes, but more fun than flying in circles all day, right?”

I got murmurs of agreement from the group, and we set out to change the track a bit. The u-turn that gave Monsoon so much trouble was replaced by a loop de loop that started low, made one and a half revolutions, and came out high.

Immediately after we started, I saw where we were having problems. Trade Wind is fast but too flashy. She makes an extra effort to show off her ‘assets’ when she flies, which screws with the lines she takes in a race. Not sure if she knows the line is there to take though because it seems like she flies mostly on instinct. She clearly got close to blacking out doing her loop because her turn out of it was jerky and unsteady.

Nightingale was even worse about trying to show off, but he isn’t as fast as Trade Wind either. Didn’t make the loop at speed and went off course on the upper end of the loop. He tried to back track, but it made him dizzy and he couldn’t do it. Had to sit him out and get him some water.

Typhoon suffered less from trying to show off in an effort to just beat Nightingale’s time, but he also failed the loop. His flying style is way more still and doesn’t bend to wind currents at all, but the actual g-force gets to him fairly easily. He seems to get more sick at high speed than the others.

Siccoro suffered at the regular turns, but executed a perfect loop. His time was bad, but he finished the track which is more than I can say for the other guys. Once Typhoon and Nightingale had recovered, I gathered everypony at the start.

“So, we’ve got some problems to address.”

Typhoon burped. “Uh, y-yeah, figured that out fine myself, thanks.”

Him first then. “Did you eat breakfast this morning?”

He nodded.

“What did you have?”

“Waffles with syrup, a banana, an orange, and a glass of milk.”

That’s an easy fix. “Don’t drink milk, don’t pound sugar. That’s what’s making you sick.”

His muzzle crinkled. “What? Nah, dude, I always get sick when I race too hard. I’m actually gonna puke if I have to do that loopy shit again.”

“This has got to be a dietary issue. The only ponies I ever knew to get sick while racing ate like shit all the time.”

He scratched at his cheek, not keeping eye contact with me. “I don’t eat too badly.”

I shook my head. “Nah, I’m picking your lunch today. We’re gonna look at your cholesterol levels and stuff later.”

“Damn it.”

Next, I motioned to Trade Wind and Nightingale. “You’ve got to master the move before you can try to show off.”

The pink mare had no excuse. “Yeah, that’s on me. I’ll do it better next time.”

“No, we’re gonna have to change the track.”

“Aww, for real?” Siccoro complained. “I like this a lot.”

“Sure, but you’re not making sharp turns. If we end up doing a city rally later, you’re not gonna do well like this.”

He hung his head. “Fair.”

“Ugh, more of this torture,” Nightingale lamented. “You’ll get rid of that accursed loop won’t you? I couldn’t even show my flare on it.”

I looked down at the stallion splayed on his back. “I’m only turning it sideways. And you should be showing your ‘flare’ on anything—you didn’t even finish the track. Not going to catch anything but a fat L if you can’t complete the course.”

“If you’re so perfect, then you do it! What kind of rally track has a loop-de-loop anyways?”

I gave Effie my tablet. “I’m gonna do it, and you’re gonna watch. We’re gonna go over all this footage after lunch and you’re gonna tell me what’s different between our performances, alright?”

“Fine,” Nightingale grumbled.

I just can’t understand why this guy gets under my skin so badly. Whatever. I set up at the beginning of the track and launched. Their times all sucked so I didn’t even bother having Effie count me down. Three sharp corners, a straight into the loop-de-loop, and back out. It was really not that complex all things considered, but the corners were still tough and required forethought, and the loop screws with your ability to think. Coming off the loop, the corners are doubly difficult, but I still managed them easily. When all was said and done, I’d probably done it in half the time Trade Wind did.

“And that,” I said, trying to catch my breath, “is how you do it.”

Staring at me in wonder, Trade Wind poked my shoulder. “Geez, you are real. The start was one thing, but then doing the turns just as well after the loop too…”

Nightingale fell back to the cloud floor. “I hate this track.”

“Good for you.” Typhoon held his head. “Like, I get that you’re special and all that, Prism, but I just can’t do what you did. I can do complex and slow, difficult and fast is just not my style, man.”

“Honestly?” Siccoro began. “I just want to know how you snapped into position for those turns. It looked kinda like you were one of those little electric slot cars on the rail tracks.”

That’s the right analogy, but does he really not know about lines? “Hmm. When you look at a track like this, can you see the path you should take?”

He tilted his head at me like I was speaking another language. “What? I mean, you just go through the rings, right?”

“Not just that. There’s a particular path through the rings you want to take.” I went to point it out, but if he doesn’t already see the line, he’s not gonna get it. “Let’s adjust the loop first, and then I’ll run it again for you guys with a little colored cloud generator. Then you can literally see the line I took after I’m done. Effie—”

“Already on it!”

I motioned for them to stand. “Alright, then, let’s get back to work.”

“Yes, sir!” from the enthusiastic half and, “Yeah, yeah” from the unenthusiastic half.

All we did was turn the loop on its side, starting low and coming out high. It would still be hard, but we wouldn’t be fighting gravity so much. As promised, after Effie came back and we were done with the track, I put on a cloud generator with neon paint in it and ran the course. The side loop was significantly easier, but it did make me wonder if we’d have to do U-turn training for them too. This move was much wider and forces you to perform a much more natural version of the U-turn maneuver I use so I hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult.

When I finished, I turned off the generator and swapped the colors out. “Do you see my line now?”

The green stallion stroked his chin. “It’d be a little hard to miss, yeah. You kinda get close to scraping the rings before the start of the turn, then bank really hard in it to end up back in the center, yeah?”

“Yep. You’ve gotta prepare for the incoming turn and know how to move your body before, during and after you do it. It comes more with practice, so put this on and see if you can’t follow my line.”

“As fast as I can or should I just try to match the line?”

It has never occurred to me to actually try and match somepony else’s line. Maybe copy the way Mom and Dad ran tracks, but never, like, exactly. “Uh, our bodies are different. My line works for me, but it might not work for you. Do it as fast as you can while following my line. If you feel like there are parts you need to move differently in, then correct them on your next turn.”

He nodded. “Good deal.”

“Get to it then.” I gave him a slap on the shoulder, and he moved to the starting line. Turning to the others, I asked, “You guys good to do this?”

Typhoon shook his head. “I’ll try, man, but I just don’t see how I could match that.”

“You don’t have to match it, you just need to be faster than the guy behind you.”

He glared at Nightingale, then turned back to me. “Alright, I can get behind that.”

“And, like, when you say ‘can’t,’ what do you mean? Is there a maneuver or a part of the course that you don’t understand or what?”

He stared at me with his blue eyes, trying to find it. “It’s something about the way your wings turn. I don’t get what’s happening or why it's so different, but when you move, it’s like the air bends for you. When I try to do it, it always feels like I’m fighting the air to get up to speed. I can control it well when I’m going slow, but everything moves too fast otherwise.”

Ah. I know exactly what he’s doing wrong, but putting it into words is gonna be hard. “Okay, I get you, I understand what’s happening here.”

“Then, what do I do about it?”

I rubbed at my temple, looking for the answer. “So, like… control is good for little moves and slow moves. You don’t have time to think about control when you go fast, so you shouldn’t try to control anything when you go fast.”

Then he threw a hoof out. “Dude, you just made like six hairpin turns at eighty miles per hour! How in the hell is that not controlled!?”

Damn it, that wasn’t right. “Uh. It is controlled, but like, not in the same way. You’re… it’s not right when you… you can’t…”

“Wait, I think I got it,” Trade Wind announced. “When you fly, you can really feel the air moving across each feather, right?”

Typhoon nodded. “Yeah, that’s how I do my tricks in performances.”

“Yeah, so, to fly fast, you have to ignore that feeling and focus specifically on your primary feathers. You can’t be in total control in a race because it takes too long to think through every action. Feel the move out rather than think it through.”

“Yes, that!” I exclaimed. “Do that. Instinct, fly on instinct.”

Typhoon thought deeply. “Instinct? But, like, careful control is what got me here. How do I not think about it?”

Trade Wind shrugged. “Think about something else? Like he said, beat the guy behind you, or even the guy in front of you.”

Irritated, he scratched his mane. “Alright, sure, I’ll give it a shot. Is Siccoro done yet?”

We looked up and he’d just completed the swirl. He was at a better pace and the trail he left didn’t go outside the rings or have any jagged points. It was nowhere near mine, and I could see just where he wasn’t able to push it fast enough to reach my line.

I turned back to them. “Give it a few seconds.” Nightingale seemed vaguely interested in the conversation but didn’t want to look that way. “What about you? Any questions before we do this again?”

The red stallion rolled over. “I am perfectly fine. There shouldn’t be any problems if I don’t have to go upside down.”

That’s kind of a problem. “Okay, why is that? You have to spin to do U-turns, and I’m gonna have you guys do that next.”

“What, do you not get headaches when you go upside down for too long?”

I looked to the other two. “Uh, no?”

They both shook their heads as well. Nightingale was now very confused. “You’re telling me you didn’t start losing vision doing the loop?”

I waved that away. “No, that’s normal. It shouldn’t give you, like, a lasting headache though.”

“It shouldn’t?” He said, more to himself than me.

This sounds like another dietary problem to me. “We should look at your health stuff too. You shouldn’t be going fast enough to have real problems on a little track like this.”

Nightingale nodded quietly, thinking.

“Okay, I’m back!” Siccoro called.

He’d finished running the course and Effie had returned the camera our way. “You shaved about ten seconds off your last time.”

“Hey, that’s good!” I announced. I took a look at the line, and it was a whole lot smoother all throughout. “This is much better. Does it help now that you can see where you were?”

He looked over the new line added to the track and thought about it. “Yeah, I think so. I feel like I could’ve done better where the line flattens out, but I got real close to matching yours on the loop. I think I picked up the pace then, but toward the end, it was really pulling hard on my wings.”

I clicked my tongue. “Not gonna have a long career if you tear something. Next time, do the reverse—pick up the pace everywhere else, but keep it consistent for the swirl.”

“Got it.”

“For now, take a rest. Who wants next?” I got the cloud generator from him and held it up for the others.

Trade Wind snatched it from me. “I’ll go! Anything you wanna tell me before I start?”

“Doing it fast is gonna make you more money than doing it flashy.”

She lowered her eyes. “Understood…”

Times had improved generally, but Nightingale’s headache got worse and worse the more he ran the course. After he nearly spun out of the loop on his fourth run, I decided it was time for an early lunch.

Because they seem to be polar opposites on everything, Typhoon was suffering from high cholesterol from an overly fatty, overly sugary diet, and Nightingale had an iron deficiency, and it was so bad that he was dealing with low blood pressure today. I gave that information to the kitchen staff and they prepared special meals for the two of them, and regular meals for the rest of us.

This time, there was about nopony else here, staff or otherwise. The cafeteria had only just opened as it was about eleven-ten. A Thunderaid commercial was running on the TV, and that stupid clip of me saying that stupid line at the opening ceremony was being used to promote it. After we all got our food, I led us to a table away from the TV. The less I have to see my own face on it, the better.

“What even is this?” Nightingale complained.

For all I could tell, it was mapo tofu, but I really doubt non-weebs even knew what that was. “Pretty sure that’s a spicy eastern dish. I’m sure it’s high in iron and sugar, which you need, so eat it.”

He stuck his tongue out. “Spicy!? I’m not made for spicy!”

Typhoon rolled his eyes. “Pussy.” Looking at his own plate with a salad and steamed vegetables, he grimaced. “At least yours probably tastes good.”

“Yours probably tastes good too!” Trade Wind announced. She’d gotten a salad and fried veggies. Higher in salt and fat, but she was in perfect health and didn’t need to cut back on anything.

Typhoon huffed. “You say that…” his eyes drifted toward Siccoro and Effie’s trays. They’d both gotten the pizza combo, also with a salad. “That’s what I want. Why can’t I have that?”

“Because, if you did,” Effie began, “you’d just eat the pizza and skip the salad. That’s how your cholesterol got like this in the first place.”

She sure is happy to assert herself with this group. She was a lot more quiet last week.

“Man,” Typhoon moaned, leaning back in his seat away from the food.

“Might as well say your prayers and pack it away,” I said, picking up my burger.

He threw a hoof toward me. “Bro, you aren’t eating this crap either!”

“Because I have that at least once a week, sometimes even more! My parents were Wonderbolts, and this is what they ate here and what they would make at home.” Not that I would ever accuse Dad of being a bad cook, but the veggie set was never the most delicious thing we ate at the house. He always called it 'the meal of necessary evil.’ It was nobody’s favorite and nobody complained about it more than Mom, but we always had it once a week to combat the crap Mom would make. We go through a lot of frying oil in a year.

The blue stallion sighed and picked up his fork, stabbing lettuce and cucumber slices. “Must be nice to have pros for parents.”

Effie rolled her eyes. “It’s not as nice as you think it is.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that, short stack?”

Her eye twitched. “Short stack!?”

“Geez, relax, it’s a joke.”

“Ugh, this is why Mom doesn’t like you.”

Typhoon’s eyes widened and he loaded up his fork again. “Wow, okay, sure. Sorry I asked.”

“In my own experience,” Trade Wind began, picking up the thread, “my dad was not home a whole lot. Bolts typically work from six to six, and we’re kinda manual labor, so he was always ran really hard. He’d get home on weekdays and be too tired to do anything but sit on the couch in front of our TV, and on the weekends, he usually had shows and stuff. My mom was the one who taught me how to fly. I didn’t start getting help from Dad until after he’d retired when I was about twelve or so. I basically didn’t know him before then, ya know?”

I didn’t know her dad was a Wonderbolt too. “I guess, neither of my parents were Wonderbolts while I was growing up, so I never lived long with an active Bolt. What team was your dad on, Trade Wind?”

“Vanhoover B-team. He made B-team captain, but always got passed over by more flashy Bolts when it came to promotion to A-team. He retired with decent times, but he was never the star of the show or anything.”

“Not every Wonderbolt is destined to shine, I suppose.” Nightingale announced, forcing his way into the conversation. “My father was Canterlot’s A-team captain for five years after my mother retired from being A-team Captain before I was born.”

I just learned all I ever needed to know about Nightingale. His parents were Undercurrent and Morning Mist, the infamous couple from the Canterlot Wonderbolts. If Grandpa’s stories about Gladius and Cherry Knot were bad, Nightingale’s parents were them but if they’d both had skills like Gladius. Self-absorbed, above everyone around them, high-born, and worst of all, talented.

“That’s, uh… impressive, Nightingale,” Trade Wind said, also knowing what I knew.

He sighed dreamily, leaning over his food. “They really were, weren’t they? I always wanted to be like them, but they were always so busy. I suppose I picked up enough since I’m here now.” He looked down disdainfully at his tofu and picked up his spoon. “Eating… this.”

Sighing again, Typhoon stabbed his fork into his green plate and chomped down on his leaves. He tilted his head, raised an ear, chewed faster and took another bite. “This ain’t bad.”

“Well, duh,” Effie announced. “You get paid to fly, they get paid to cook. Just like how not just anypony can be a Wonderbolt, not just anypony can be a chef for the Wonderbolts. Did you ever eat vegetables before this or what? Salad is never that bad.”

He rolled his eyes. “I mean, yeah, but there was better food. My parents both work and my dad’s a techie, so he makes pretty good money. Mom doesn’t care to cook all that often so we ate out a lot. It was just me and my little brother, and he’s a techie like Dad so they tend to stay cooped up on their computers and get food to reheat whenever they have to. I’d go on food runs for everypony all the time, so being hungry and ready to get home is what drove me to get better at flying. Couldn’t find a tech job like my dad and my brother, so I turned to this instead. Didn’t think my eating habits would be a problem.”

That sounds familiar. “You did deliveries to get better? Where did you live?”

“Manehattan. Gotta know the best places to get food, and those are usually tucked away in little narrow alleys. Other ponies, buildings, cars, poles and wires to dodge every which way. Couldn’t go fast, but I still had to maneuver a lot. Eventually it turned into a game for me. How fast could I go without making anything spill or slosh around on the way home? I got a phone and headphones in high school, and I started dancing during my food runs too. Then I saw the Wonderbolts do a show back home and I thought, ‘ya know, I could do that too.’”

“Is your family all one race, or…?”

He shook his head. “Mom’s a pegasus, the rest are unicorns.”

Effie looked sadly at her pizza slice. “Unicorns in tech. Typical.”

Typhoon frowned at her. “What? Is that wrong or something?”

“I said it was typical! Do your ears work?”

Trade Wind patted her shoulder. “Well, Effie, 'typical' isn’t normally used to describe something nice. Why would you say ‘typical’ with that tone? Is there someone you know who also works in tech?”

Confusion washed over the supporter. “My… tone?” Then she processed the question. “Uh, no! It’s just… a lot of unicorns work in tech. Every super rich pony seems to be a unicorn in tech. Ya know. Typical.”

Siccoro chuckled. “Wish my dad worked in tech. Then maybe we’d have been super rich too.”

“Oh, is your dad a unicorn too?” Typhoon asked.

“Yep. Mom’s an earth pony, one of my little sisters is a unicorn, the other one is an earth pony. My three little brothers are all the races too. We’re a big family of mutts.”

All three races, huh? He’s gotta have a crazy family tree. “Who taught you how to fly?”

He stabbed a bunch of leaves onto his fork. “One grandparent on each side is a pegasus, and we lived near both of them back in Pinto which is about an hour northwest of Las Pegasus.”

Trade Wind made a big nod. “Ooh, so you’re a country boy, huh?”

He scratched his head. “Yeah, kinda. It’s a ‘big little city,’ so we’ve got some stuff, but it’s easier to take a drive to Las Pegasus when you really wanna do things. Good-sized house with a decent amount of land for the eight of us. We were the family all the other families gathered to during reunions and the like. An uncle of mine owns a huge farm between Pinto and San Palomino, so we’d help out there a lot too.”

“Farm work, huh?” Trade Wind mused. “You don’t see too many pegasi doing that. What did you do?”

“Oh, I helped with crop dusting. And once with a fire.”

I blinked. “What is crop dusting?”

The green stallion rubbed at his darker green beard. “Uh, you know, where you get pesticide or seeds and you drop it over fields. It’s kinda like the cloud generators we use to draw patterns, but, like, over the ground. Makes planting and maintaining fields really easy. My grandma, Uncle’s mom, used to do it for the farm back when my grandpa was running it, but they’re retired now. She taught me and my little brother how. It’s good practice for spinning and flying upside down, and it needed to be done every couple months, so I did it a lot.”

“They let a… a farmer into the Wonderbolts?” Nightingale said, in disbelief.

“I mean, I was surprised too. I didn’t think I was all that fast or special either, but working on the farm kinda taught me everything I needed to know. Weather conditions, basic maneuvers, what to watch out for. I did tricks on my runs for fun too, and some days I would need to cover every single field and that took hours.”

“That’s really cool,” I commented. “But it definitely sounds like you worked on something completely different than the acres back home.”

He was taken aback. “You worked on a farm?”

I rolled my neck around. “I mean, kinda. Not often. My mom’s friend owns the big apple orchard in Ponyville. I’ve helped out a few times, but they don’t really have ‘pegasus’ jobs there, and it’s really, really hard to keep up with the earth ponies, including my little brother who works there part-time these days.”

Trade Wind lowered her brows. “Your mom’s friend… owns Sweet Apple Acres?”

Now I was taken aback. “Oh, you know it?”

“Of course I know it! They’ve got a high-end liqueur line and that seasonal apple cider that shows up in September and disappears by November. I’m still trying to wrap my head around just how they managed to make such a big name for themselves with just an apple orchard…”

Well, the real answer is ‘in the right place at the right time.’ “Miss Applejack has been through a lot, but she’s more like ‘my friend’s mom’ than a business mare to me.” She’d probably flip if I told her I knew Miss Rarity too.

Trade Wind shivered. “A friend's mom? She has kids?”

I nodded. “Yeah, there are six of them. All earth ponies though.”

The pink mare lowered her brows in deep concentration. “Six? Some mares really do have it all…”

Frustrated, Effie asked, “What’s so great about having a bunch of foals? Aren’t they just, like, a drain on you?”

“Whaaat? Come on, have you never held a cute little foal? Played with a cute little foal? They’re little and sweet and adorable! What’s not to like about foals?”

Effie chased a cherry tomato around with her fork. “The eleven months of pain to get one, the cleaning, the crying, the screaming. I don’t want any little snot-nosed monsters running around me all the time.”

I blinked. “Wow. Harsh.”

“It is not! It’s true… isn’t it?”

Siccoro shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, man, that’s a little overexaggerated, don’t you think? Like, I’m the oldest in my family, so I’ve had a bunch of snot-nosed brats running around me all the time, but they’re fun to have around more often than not. My youngest brother, the other pegasus in my family, was born ten years after me, but I have a better relationship with him than I do any of my other siblings. He’s my little buddy.”

Nightingale waved his hoof dismissively. “Please, that’s simply because you’re the same race. Brats are only good for compliments and admiration. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with one all hours of the day.”

Typhoon rolled his eyes. “I’m sure your parents couldn’t imagine it either.” Nightingale looked confused, but he continued on. “Like, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be upset to make the brats ya know, but like… actually raising one feels like a lot of stress. I’d want to have my life totally in order and not want to be away from them all the time. I don’t think I could be doing this and be a dad at the same time.”

I know Spitfire said this to me last week, but like, that’s a really solid point.

Trade Wind shook her head. “Oh, it wasn’t all bad when I was little. It was really special when Dad would come home and actually be there to spend time with, and it was amazing to see him perform. I was always really proud to see him fly and be on posters around town for the next show they’d do. He was never the best racer or anything, but I still got to brag to all my friends that my dad was a Wonderbolt.”

Maybe it won’t be too bad.

Effie pointed a hoof at Trade Wind. “But you’d still drop out the minute you start having kids, right?”

She looked at her like that was the most obvious thing in the world. “I mean, yeah. Being pregnant would mess with your body, and it’s just irresponsible otherwise. You can’t leave a little foal alone, and they have to nurse for a few months before you can really ever get any space from them. Not that I really see why you’d want to.”

“To get back to your career!” Effie exclaimed. “I just don’t get it. Why throw it all away just for a kid? You could have everything you ever wanted being a Wonderbolt!”

It was beginning to look as if Trade Wind’s patience was wearing thin. “Well, I want kids, so clearly I can’t have everything as a Wonderbolt. You’re a mare, Effie, I don’t understand how this is such a foreign concept to you.”

The violet pegasus’s eyes fell to her plate and she kept her mouth shut. A hush had fallen over the table and ponies ate their food quietly. When we were all finished, I stood and picked up my tray. “Alright, let’s get back to work, guys.”

“Yes, Sir,” the group responded.