Glorified

“Hey, Prism! You in there?”

Cheesette, my marefriend, was tapping on my head.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but as I sat up from her lap and looked around, I felt like I’d been asleep for a long time. “Guess not. Sorry I passed out on ya.”

She put a foreleg around me and leaned against me. “Well, I don’t mind. You’ve been real busy lately. You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping right, so I thought I’d let you nap.”

“Thanks sugar pie!” I kissed her head then realized I didn’t know what day or time it was. “Oh, Goddess, what was I doing? Cheesette, you don’t have my phone, do you?”

She raised her pink brows like she was startled. “Oh! Right, somepony called while you were asleep. I didn’t wanna wake you, so…” She took my phone from behind her and passed it to me.

Today was Friday, April 25th, 2028, at 6 pm. I’ll graduate high school tomorrow, and then comes my Wonderbolts Exam. Who did I miss a call from? An unknown number? Alright, stop. Surroundings first.

This was Cheesette’s room. Confection stickers everywhere, mostly pies, pink painted walls decorated with yellow ‘frosting’ lines, a fluffy bed with bright pink sheets, a yellow bean bag chair in the middle of the floor (which we were on top of), a big TV with that farming game she likes to play on it, and a desk and a computer in front of the window next to her streaming setup.

That means I’m at the Pie’s house, and it’s still Friday. There shouldn’t be anything to worry about, but I should probably return the call since it might be related to my exam. It was never the performance part that we were worried about… “Do you mind if I make a call?”

She made a quick glance my way, then went back to her game. “Well, I’d really like it if you got back to playing with me since we’ve got stuff to do for the farm, but you can take your call.”

“Thanks.” I’ll have to make it up to her later. We haven’t had much time to hang out with the crap storm that was my exam prep this month. All I’ve done since we got back from school is sleep on her.

I redialed the number, and after two rings, it picked up. “Hello?” The voice was female and immature but not a kid’s voice. A teenager who was a bit more raspy than most and with a deeper tone than most mares. She sounded kinda like Mom, actually.

“Hi, this is Prism Dash, I got a call from this number earlier?”

“Oh, yes!” She cleared her throat on the other end. “I’m Effie Lightning, but you can call me Effie. I saw that you were on the rookie Wonderbolt’s roster too, so I wanted to get to know you.”

Hmm. Three problems with that. One: I haven’t been told I passed my exam yet; I still haven’t taken the performance test. Two: who is this girl, and how does she have access to the rookie roster before the tests are all complete? Three, and the biggest problem of all: why does she want to get to know me?

I cleared my throat to get Cheesette’s attention. “Hey, that’s great! Will you give me a minute?”

She caught my eye and put her controller down. “What’s up?”

Effie replied, “Sure, Prism. Um, you don’t mind me calling you that, do you? I mean, we’ll both be on the same team here in a bit, so it makes sense for me to call you by your name, right?”

Wow! Not okay! “Yeah, one moment, please.” I muted the mic and put the phone down. “I think a crazy stalker mare got my phone number somehow.”

Cheesette’s eyes went wide. “Oh, wow, that’s not okay! Do we need to go see Mister Fin?”

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea. “Maybe, but I don’t wanna get the cops involved until I know this is really some kinda stalker. I want you to text Mom and Dad and ask them if they know an ‘Effie Lightning.’”

Cheesette rolled off the beanbag and took her phone from her desk. “Understood.”

Unmuting the mic, I said, “Hey, Effie, thanks for waiting. So, who else is on the roster right now? I haven’t heard much about it yet.”

A page flipped on the other end. “Just a hoofful of other advance candidates. Cloudsdale branch is getting a bunch of pegasi from all over. I kinda feel bad for the regular guys who still have to take the performance test. There are only like five slots left to fill.”

Alright, that does sound realistic. Dad had been a part of the selection process while he was still with the team about sixteen years ago. Ponies who had a record of first place in races or high profile stunts at high school and college events can get in ahead of the normal selection, provided they pass the written test. My dumb ass, following my Mom’s dumb ass, was struggling to pass high school, let alone a college level test that covers advanced biology and physics. The least realistic thing about this is that I passed the test at all.

Have I met this mare? I’m so bad with names, I could’ve just forgotten her. “That sounds rough for them, I guess. Did they post the written exam results anywhere?”

“Uh—Yeah… They got posted a few minutes ago on the website.”

I put my hoof over the mic and turned back to Cheesette. “Anything? Also, check the Bolt’s site to see if the results are up.”

“On it. Also, Mister Soarin says he doesn’t know, Miss Dash is still typing.”

Strange. Mom usually answers first.

Cheesette reared her head back. “Huh, what do ya know? The scores were posted, like, a minute ago.”

Good Goddess, did she just post the scores? Man, if I knew anybody else who had taken the exam already, I’d call to confirm, but all my friends are still juniors or ineligible. This is weird. I unmuted the phone again. “Cool, I’ll look at them when I get a chance. Are you calling all the ponies who passed the exam?”

There was a delay in her response. “Yes… I wanted to make sure all the short list guys know what to expect.”

“So, what should I expect?”

This one, she was ready for. “Well, first, we’ll have an entrance ceremony on Monday, May 15th. Everypony will be assigned their team and trainer. We’ll be working with Mom, given the names we’re attached to. The test scores are mostly a formality to make sure new recruits don’t break themselves doing our stunts. Everybody in our group is gonna be the best of the best, so we’ll likely get right onto routines. The rookie show is scheduled for the 29th, so we’ll be hitting the ground running. We normally get one to two weeks to learn a routine, and those who can’t do it are benched pretty fast, but you shouldn’t have any trouble with your record.”

Her mom, huh? Guess that means she’s the daughter of a trainer, but who?

Cheesette wagged her hoof at me. “Hey, Miss Dash says she needs to talk to you, like, now.”

I nodded to Cheesette and put the phone back to my ear. “Alright, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. I’ve got another call to get to, so I’ll talk to you later, I guess.”

“Ah! Uh, wait a minute! I, uh…” A little bit of panic and moving things around on Effie’s end over the line. “W-we should go over the rookie routine sometime! A-are you free this weekend, or next week?”

Wait a minute. What is this? That doesn’t sound like she just wants to practice. “Let me get back to you on that. Anyways, I’ve got to take this other call. Bye.”

“Call me again!”

Click. I stared, confused, at the phone. “Cheesie-pie?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“I think I have a crazy fan.”

She frowned, getting off her gamer chair and joining me on the bean bag again. “That’s… I don’t think I like that.”

I put a wing around her and pulled her close. “Yeah, no, me neither. How do you think this happened?”

She backed off and stared at me like I was an idiot. “What do you mean, ‘how’? Have you ever lost a competition?”

“No.” But, then again, I’ve never really been challenged in a competition either.

“And how long have you been racing?”

“Since 2020, you know that.”

She put a foreleg around my neck and looked deep into my eyes. “Prism, baby, it might be weird to hear this from me, but you’re kind of impressive.”

And so it was. Cheesette and I had known each other since childhood, and in the last three years, we’d been inseparable. I’ve tried to propose a few times now, but neither of us were out of high school so she kept telling me to wait. Still, it made me blush. “I… I mean.”

She kissed my cheek. “Good Goddess, I hate how cute you are.” She brushed her curly pale pink mane aside. “I mean, you’ve been racing for eight years and don’t have a loss to your name? Nopony else can say that. Objectively speaking here, you’re kind of a stud. And, maybe I’ve learned how to be scary to other mares.”

I pressed my cheek to hers. “Oh yeah? Tell me more.”

Chesette pushed me off. “You goober. Look, all I’m saying is, if the other mares in the school didn’t know the kind of abject violence I’m capable of, they’d be all over you. You’re mine, though, and they know that. This Effie chick,” she said with a kind of hate that was rare for her, “just doesn’t know me yet, and has probably seen you perform. It’s not like I can be up in the skies with you when you go to Cloudsdale and Las Pegasus.”

The worst competitions were always the ones she couldn’t attend. The only time I ever got close to second during one was when she wasn’t there to cheer me on shortly after we ‘officially’ started dating early in my sophomore year. Come to think of it, that was about the time she got into MMA.

“Speaking of,” she added, “what are you gonna do about that if you get drafted by the Cloudsdale branch?”

I slapped a hoof to my forehead. “Oh, crap, that’s what she said! ‘A lot of pegasi from all over got drafted to Cloudsdale…’”

“Let me rephrase that: what are you going to do because you got drafted by the Cloudsdale branch?”

The headache was coming and I did not want it. Chessette was soft and warm, and thinking was hard. “Man, I don’t know! I didn’t even apply for the Cloudsdale branch. I thought that since Ponvyille has its own branch now that I wouldn’t have to worry about it! Now I’m gonna have to move or spend hours every day flying back and forth. I don’t wanna go anywhere!”

She patted my head and pressed me to her. “Aww, baby.” We sat there together like that for a while. Eventually, she picked up her controller, passed me mine, and we farmed. With the real world swept aside, I could work the ground with my hooves, plant and grow vegetables, tend to the animals, and Cheesette could live her ancestral life mining rocks on a rock farm. We collected ore, sold crops, made food, and enjoyed each other in the game silently.

“It’s awfully quiet in here,” Mister Cheese said, knocking on the door. “You wouldn’t be doing anything with long-term consequences, would you?”

Chessette rolled her eyes, but then smiled deviously. “Oh, yes, Daddy, and he’s soooo good!” she moaned.

My upper body stiffened, and my lower body stiffened, and I crossed my hind legs and said, “No, no! It’s a joke! She’s making a bad joke!”

Opening the door with a smile on his face, Mister Cheese casually threw a hammer to the floor. “Oh, you. Anyways, dinner is ready, kids! Mom made baked potato croquettes.”

The head of the steel hammer glinted in the lights of Chesette’s room. I swallowed. “That sounds great!”

“You bet it does. Come on, let’s eat!”

As he walked away in one of his many yellow collared shirts, my heart climbed back down my throat. This must be what mares feel like when we’re at school together.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Chesette apologized. “I didn’t think Daddy would… take it so far.”

“Yeah, no.” My mouth was so dry. “That’s a new one. I’ve never been so scared and aroused in my life.”

She bit my ear and my wings flared out. “I’ll make it up to you later,” she whispered. Standing up, she headed for the door, picking up the hammer on her way. “Let’s go.”

It would be worth it. But he’d kill you! But it would be worth it. But you could die! But it would be worth it.

With my heart resolved and my fear mastered, I followed my mare.

Would.

“Dude,” Mom said, disappointed.

I’d just made it home, it was before nine like has been always asked of me, and it was my day off. We had a schedule for these things, so what was she mad about? I stared at the middle-aged rainbow mare in wonder. “Yeah?”

“I told you to call me!”

I took a quick breath. “Ooooh, right…”

Mom scratched at her mane. “Geez. Ponies would accuse you of being mine even if you weren’t. Go to the office, we gotta talk.”

Was… was that an insult? A self-own? What does that say about us? Whatever. “Okay, sure.”

Our house was an average-sized two-story home with exposed varnished wooden beams at every corner and painted with periwinkle for the exterior and white accents on the molding. A balcony with a wrought iron railing, each bar twisted into a cage design in the center, and a peaked roof. We had a red brick chimney going up the side of the house, and each windowsill had flowers planted in them to match the house with the season.

The inside was painted in cream so that Dad and I didn’t blend into the walls, and we had blue velvet furniture with glass tables and red granite countertops. The living room had a big TV, console, and sound system for our movie marathons, and disc cases filled the shelves with the various films we’d all watch together, though about half of it was anime, and half of that was my Roboknights collection.

On the bottom floor was the kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and guest room. Each room was designed with its purpose in mind, and they were all color-coded. Bathrooms are shades of blue, the kitchen is red, the laundry room is yellow, and the guest room is green.

On the second floor are all the bedrooms. Mom and Dad’s room was the closest room to the staircase and was painted a sky blue that Mom and Haze would disappear in if their manes were covered. My room was next, and I had it painted like the inside of the hangar of my favorite spaceship from Roboknights. It took me literal months to get every detail right, but when you walk in, it looks like the space is about twice as big as it really is. Of course, my desk, bed and shelves filled with Roboknights and other models and painting and sculpting tools kinda destroy the effect.

Haze’s room is next to mine and is a dark red since he’s angsty like that. He’s got all the same stuff any colt his age would have in there, except his Roboknight models are unsanded, unpainted, and just thrown up in any which way with no attention to detail at all! But they're not mine and I got in trouble last time I tried to fix one, so I don’t go in there when I don’t have to.

At the end of this hall was an extra room. Originally, Mom and Dad had wanted another kid, but thanks to all the issues Mom had conceiving Haze, they decided against that. Instead, they turned it into a study that really just collected crap before I complained enough to be allowed to fix it. Now, it’s a yellow-orange painted room with warm light lamps, books in shelves, our files, Mom and Dad’s computers, and this cool old phonograph I got from Grandma Downy Snow’s house. The record collection is small and the audio quality isn’t great, but it works, which is the neat part. There was a chair for the desk, a recliner next to the phonograph, and extra folding chairs in the event we needed to have a family meeting.

Mom took the desk chair. “You’re gonna wanna set one of the chairs up for this.”

The recliner was kind of in the corner, so that made sense enough. “Uh, okay.”

She looked through the file shelves until she found a Wonderbolts year book. This one was dated 2008. Equestria really was just beginning to manufacture modern technology back then, so it was probably one of the first totally machine-made books in the world.

She flipped open to the Cloudsdale branch’s page and pointed at a young mare. She had a yellow coat with a combed back two-tone orange mane and bright orange eyes. Based on her uniform in the picture, she was the team captain for this year. Scanning the rest of the page, a very young Mom and Dad could also be found.

“So, buddy, do you remember Captain Spitfire?”

She seemed vaguely familiar. “Maybe? Was she at one of my races or something?”

Mom frowned. “She was probably at a lot of your races. She’s still active as an instructor with the Cloudsdale branch, and she often serves as a judge for performances held there. She was my captain from '04 to '08 before I tore my wing and your Dad knocked me up and took her job.”

See, if I said something like that, I’d get yelled at. “Mom, phrasing.”

She covered her face with her hooves. “Oh, Goddess, I didn’t mean to say it like that! You became a thing! I got pregnant! Married? Yeah, that.”

Do I say things like that too? Is that why? “Yeah, that. So, what about her?”

She took a breath. “Well, the Captain was my senior all my life, and she sorta helped champion me back into the Wonderbolts after I blew my first shot with the junior corps. She thought we’d fly together for a long time, and then the tear happened. What was supposed to be ten years of performing together ended up in me settling down after four.”

Considering who Mom is, that’s kinda wild. “Wow. You don’t really seem like the type.”

She clapped her hooves. “Bro, that was your fault. If you weren’t so stinkin’ cute!” Mom sighed. “Well, we were all surprised that I liked mothering better than racing or performing, and since I’d torn my wing, I’d already hit my peak. I’d never be as good again, so my career was over. Of course, I was young and in my early twenties at the time. Captain Spitfire was… not so young.”

Huh. Where’s she going with this? “How old was she?”

“She was twenty-six when I joined her squad, and thirty when I retired.” Mom brushed her rainbow mane to the side. “So, getting up there in age seeing how bad I’d messed up my wing and how much fun I was having with you, she thought maybe it was finally time to hang up the old wings and give romance a shot.”

I didn’t like where she was going with this. “This doesn’t happen to be related to that call I got, does it?”

Mom rubbed her hooves together, trying to find the words. “So… Spitfire never got married, but she did have a kid.”

“A kid named Effie Lightning.”

“Right.” Mom took her phone from her lap and showed me a picture of a young pegasus mare about my age who had a violet coat with bright yellow eyes and a two-tone orange and yellow mane that was sort of spiky and pulled into a ponytail. “That’s her.”

She can’t be older than sixteen. “How is she part of the rookie group? I thought you had to be eighteen to join the Bolts?”

Mom sucked air in through her teeth. “So. Captain Spitfire is kind of a big deal in the Bolts. She’s got third or fourth on, like, every record the bolts keep.”

“Every record? Like top score for each named trick, track time, and flight time? Don’t most ponies specialize in one of the three?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a few firsts in track and flight times, and your dad could still probably get top marks for most tricks and some of the endurance races, but Spitfire did everything well. She earned her captain title, there wasn’t much she couldn’t do, but…”

“She was never the best at anything.”

“Mm-hmm.” Mom stared at the picture of her old friend sadly. “She was a good captain and promoted everypony she could without losing her edge, but she’d always end up raising the next guy to beat her own records. She’s the best trainer the Bolts have ever had, but that’s not what earns you sponsorships or accolades. Ponyville Academy still uses your Dad and me to promote its flight program, and we help some of the better seniors out navigating sponsorships and with the Bolts exam which also brings in extra money. For school teachers, we’re rich. For former Wonderbolts, though, we’re about the middle of the road. Compared to the kind of money that flows around the tracks these days, you could end up making more bits in a year than your Dad and I combined over the course of our careers.”

It still didn’t really compute to me how much money I actually had to my name. I’d won everything I ever entered, and some of those competitions had cash prizes. I could go to a fancy college in Manehattan and pay for it out of pocket, let alone scholarships for flight programs, but passing the Bolts exam eliminated the need for that at all. Technically, I was already part of the pro circuit, but for an old generation Bolt who was never the best at anything…

“Did Spitfire ever get sponsored?”

“That’s… part of the story too, actually.”

Now, I really don’t like where this is going. “What happened?”

She pulled up another picture, this time a recent picture of an old violet unicorn stallion wearing a fancy suit with his yellow mane slicked back and glistening yellow eyes under small glasses. “This is Struck Gold, Effie’s father. He owns the Struck Company, which produces Thunderaid.”

“Oh.” That’s a big name with a lot of cash attached to it. There’s not a sporting event out there without Thunderaid in every vending machine, concession stand, and soda fountain.

“Yeah. Spitfire was sponsored by Thunderaid. They were her only sponsor, but it kept her in the black no matter how she performed… so long as she remained captain of the Cloudsdale Wonderbolts.”

“This doesn’t get gross, does it?”

Mom shook her head. “Not really, but it does get kinda weird. Basically, when Spitfire announced that she was stepping down, Thunderaid tried to make that not happen. She was practically at every event, her face moved a lot of product, and if she ever got on the podium, they’d make each other a lot of money through brand recognition alone. She met Struck, and then she kinda vanished for a few years. I was never told the details, but she came back to the Wonderbolts a few years later with Effie in tow and never said a word about what happened while she was gone.”

I frowned. “How do you know she’s his daughter, then?”

“I mean, there’s no hard evidence, but everypony has eyes, ya know? She looks more like him than Spitfire. And, strangely enough, Spitfire still appears with Thunderaid Logos on her uniforms. Something happened, and something is still going on, but the details are super murky.”

“Okay, that explains the how. What about the why? Like, why did some random mare I’d never met call me and try to make a plan to meet up with me?”

Mom raised an eyebrow. “A meet-up? That’s going too far, even for a super fan like her…”

What an icky pair of words. “Super fan?”

Clapping her hooves together, Mom leaned over the table. “So, mister superstar, did you know that you have a flawless record?”

I rolled my eyes. “I mean, yeah, I was there.”

“Right.” She took a list of all my entries from the files. “No second-place trophies, perfect scores at every performance, holder of nearly every junior flier record there is. I might even feel better about it if you had a bit of my ego, but you’re kind of on track to be the best there ever was.”

Ah, this again. That memory from earlier flashed in my mind. Dad’s words. “I just do this for fun though.”

Mom made a silent prayer. “I know, buddy, but I’m your Mom, of course I know that. Ponies who don’t know you just see the superstar flier. Downy Snow loved seeing pegasus fly so much that she chased one down and ended up giving birth to your Dad. Ponies love to watch you, and you always win. You’re a performer, an entertainer, and the best of your generation. Worst of all, you never gloat about it. You could honestly stand to be a bit more of an ass about your record, you’d at least seem more real.”

I hate it when ponies do this. “But I don’t care about my record…”

“I know. But not everypony is you, and a lot of ponies who aren’t you do care about your record—Namely, Captain Spitfire and Effie Lightning.”

I let out a breath, ready to be done with this conversation. Ah, I want to go back to the Pie’s and snuggle with Chessette. “And what about them, exactly?”

“Well, Spitfire, for one, thinks you’re like the second coming of Commander Hurricane.”

That felt icky too. “What? I’m not some legendary ancient pegasus. I just like to fly and build things.”

Mom rested her cheek on her hoof. “Uh-huh. She wants to make you into a Wonderbolt Captain. And as for Effie… well, she wants to meet you. Real bad. Like, concerningly bad. Like, me-when-I-was-a-teenager-trying-to-meet-A.K.-Yearling kinda bad.”

Goddess among us, how horrifying. “But!”

“No buts! You gotta realize this sooner or later, dude. You’re famous, and getting into the Bolts right out of high school is only going to spread that fame even further.”

I laid my head on the desk. “Ugh, this is not cool.”

Mom shrugged. “That’s what you get for ‘flying for fun’ after all this time. Still, Effie is gonna be a thorn in your side and you need to be ready for that.”

“How is she even on the team again?”

“She isn’t, actually. What she is, however, is an exception to the rules and she’s going to serve as her mom’s assistant until she graduates high school. Spitfire has a lot of sway and can bend things in the Bolts like that.”

I rubbed at my temples. “Come on, I passed the test! I thought the nightmare was over already!”

“About that…” I looked up and Mom had pulled up the exam scores from the website. “You got the minimum passing score.”

“Isn’t that what you got?”

She ground her teeth. Her being a school teacher now is probably the funniest twist of fate there ever was. “That’s true. But I didn’t think you were gonna pass at all. You never passed a practice test. You consistently got around the fifties when we did them. You need a seventy minimum, and somehow, magically, even though we’d run out of time, you pulled twenty points out of thin air.”

I swallowed. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” She put the phone away and leaned back in the desk chair. “I’m going to pull some strings and get this looked into quietly, but I think we both know how suspect this is. Not only do you pass when there really isn’t data to support that, but Spitfire wants you on her team in particular, and Effie is your biggest fan. You need to be careful about what you say. Ya know. Phrasing.”

“Aaah! Why me?”

She patted my shoulder. “Sorry, kiddo. You lived up to the hype.”

“This sucks!” I covered my head. “What do I do?”

“Suck it up for now. We’ll figure something out. But like, don’t go and be mean to Effie. If you want to be a Wonderbolt, you’re gonna have to play nice.”

The glint of that hammer flashed in my mind. “Oh, Goddess, I hope she’s not into me. Otherwise, Cheesette might kill her.”

“Hey, you—” Mom paused mid-sentence. She thought about it. “Don’t meet Effie anywhere Cheesette could reach her.”

I looked up into Mom’s magenta eyes. “Why would you say that? I don’t need relationship drama on top of all this!”

“Honestly, I don’t know if Cheesette would be more or less likely to commit a murder if you were married to her. What did your little brother call her the other day?”

“Cheesette isn’t a yandere!”

Mom crossed her forelegs. “Yeah, that’s the one. Sandwich is the same way.”

I shivered. Cheesette has made her own advances on me before, but the fear of her father is what keeps me from doing anything. He always plays it off as a joke, but I don’t ever think he’s joking. “Well, maybe.”

Getting out of her chair, Mom came around and hugged me. “Bah, you’ll be alright. Just be cool and you should be golden. Honestly, I’ve never been worried about how you behave. I trust you, buddy. You can do this.”

I sighed. “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

“Love you too, Prism.”