Behind the Corner
Somewhere far away both in space and time, a group of Cloudsdale fillies were preparing for their PE class. It was a grand day as they were finally going to the “big ponies” training ground. All this time they had been using a hall with a floor just in case a pony would fall down. Now it was all different. This new area had a bunch of rings to fly through and only a few places where to land so it meant that the new pegasai would have to stay in the air all the time.
Their PE teacher was a royal descendant famous all over Equestria as Lord William Lindsworth Sebastian the Third of Baltimare (now also known as Bob). A long time ago he had grown tired of his royal duties as he was getting older so he had decided to lead a peaceful life and settle down in Cloudsdale. Without his royal garments, nopony could recognize him and Bob also didn't feel the necessity to tell about his royal past.
Carrying a yellow bag, he lead them out of the school and towards the grounds. Casual bystanders looked at these fillies as they were flying around and making noise, Rainbow Dash being the loudest.
“You all know, I am the fastest!”, a voice stated.
“Nuh-uh, you liar!”
“Prove me wrong!”
“You can't even beat a snail!”
“Now what's that supposed to mean?” the argument heated up.
“Hush you all, we will soon arrive.” the teacher quieted them down.
After a few peaceful seconds a voice suggested “Hey! Are you two coming to the bakery after school?”
“Didn't I tell you to quiet down? Cakes aren't good for your health,” once more everything was silent.
“So let's meet around the corner?”
“Quiet!” their planning was interrupted.
Their new training grounds were about thrice as big as the old hall, it had those special kind of clouds, which were more dense than the usual fluffy ones. An amateur would believe that these are a lot worse, since all the falls would be more painful, but that was only half true. Bob knew that elastic clouds were safer as it was easier to land on them and the pain from the fall was only a bit worse, their surface, wasn't exactly hard earth-ground.
Rainbow immediately dashed towards the start line and abruptly stopped just before the end of it. Her mane hadn't known a brush for days and it also had a bit of black in it as she would often fly through trees to practice her maneuvers. Yet on the inside she was shining - being the best at every exercise, she was able to surprise even Bob, who hadn't seen such talent in ages.
She also would talk with him about the Wonderbolts and their daring tricks. Bob surprisingly knew every little detail about each and every one so they could spend hours on this activity. Rainbow was even planning her own special trick basing on the best techniques, but that's another story.
Everypony formed a small crowd near the entrance, some were eagerly waiting for further instructions, surveying the peculiar landscape, which was like no other - a vast amount of clouds as far as the eye can see, no buildings in sight, lots of dangerous falls and a variety of training rings. Their upperclassmen loved to tell them that the rings were always ignited to make sure that everypony was flying properly, yet since there was no fire, relieved sighs could be heard.
Bob put down his yellow bag and backed away a few steps.
"Fluttershy, you may open your eyes now, we are here, there is nothing to be afraid of."
The bag slowly bobbed to one side and unrolled. Four hooves, two eyes and a pink mane appeared.
"ummm....I think it would be..........very nice to go......you know.....home......if that's okay with you...." Fluttershy managed to tell Bob.
"No, you are going to have some special training today," the answer was firm, "the rest of you start doing the warm-up as we practiced and then......"
Fluttershy quickly trotted further away, where less eyes could see her and closed her own once again. She could hear other fillies take off in the air. The notion of flight with nothing underneath scared her - she had never flown higher than three feet and even that was unsafe. It was just impossible to fly outside.
"Fluttershy, please open your eyes now," Bob asked. Many years of royal duties had taught him patience and he wasn't going to let anypony fail his class.
No answer.
"I see it's too soon, isn't it. Try opening just one eye."
She moved her cheeks, yet both her eyelids were still closed shut.
Bob frowned, "Open your right eye. "
"........One.....two......." Fluttershy began a countdown.
"....threeee....." she started to shake.
Bob waited for the climax.
"f...f-ffour....." she wasn't counting till three after all.
"......f-ffive......ummm....ss-six...."
"Till ten, okay?" some ground rules needed to be laid.
"...se.........seven................. eight........" Bob noted that she was slowing down, as there were only two numbers left.
"..........n..ni...n-nine....." Fluttershy was shaking even more as a very scary number was now approaching.
''.........t....ten....." the stress was so great that she opened both her eyes by accident.
"See? Everything is all right. Now stay here and look at the exercises. When you are ready - join us. It is absolutely safe. There is always a weather pony stationed here and we will be using the easiest course, which doesn't have any places where to fall through. Now I must go to the others."
Fluttershy wasn't ready to rashly change her decision, but she observed the other fillies. After careful examination, she understood that the rings weren't on fire, they were just glowing brightly. That gave her the courage to look down. Apart from her only three other fillies were not flying, they weren't hurt so that meant that they hadn't crashed. Also it looked like everypony was present, therefore she deduced that nopony had fallen down.
Rainbow Dash wasn't happy with the lack of challenge so she had already managed to clear several other courses and was already doing an advanced one. Tomboy Rainbow Dash didn't listen to him at all, when Bob asked her to land.
"Rainbow, go down now," he insisted.
"No way! It's so cool."
"I will come and get you if you don't," she was warned.
"Ha! You can't catch me, slowpoke!" Rainbow was confident.
"That's it."
Rainbow decided to fly away towards the Evergreen forest. A few seconds and a pony could only see a bright rainbow path from her mane.
"Everypony stop training and prepare for leaving," Bob quickly followed the path.
Ponies started to gather near the entrance and so Fluttershy was once again surrounded by other fillies.
"That wasn't very hard, I want to come here again," the same voice from before now was much louder than before.
"I wonder what the other courses are like."
"There are others?"
''Haven't you heard?"
"No."
"Dummy."
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
Fluttershy was unable to continue listening as she was approached by another pony.
"How did you like today?" she didn't know that the shy pony hadn't participated.
"....ummm...fine..." the filly didn't want to look like a scaredy-cat.
"Did you fly through the highest ring?"
".....no...."
"She didn't do anything!" another voice objected.
"Is that true?"
Fluttershy blushed, tilted her head and couldn't answer.
"See, I told you."
"What a baby!"
"....no...I am not..." Fluttershy did step up.
"Oh yeah?"
"......umm....yes...." she tried to sound confident, but it didn't work.
"Prove it!" the pony near her smiled suspiciously, "come to the bakery with us today!"
That would have been an unusual request on almost any occasion, but there were rumors that the local Cloudsdale bakery had obtained a beast, which they had put in a cage to scare the costumers. Apparently, it roared and demanded tribute from everypony.
".....you know....that is not very....."
"Sissy!" other ponies weren't so patient.
"....no....I am not.....I.....I will come..." Fluttershy decided.
"Good."
She shivered, imaging the possible terrors awaiting her.
Rainbow Dash had already reached the forest. She flew through the greenery, swooshing past every tree, shaking the branches to shake off the chase.
Rainbow looked back at her PE teacher, who was flying above the trees, still following her.
"Bob won't catch me, he is just hovering above. Tooo easy!" the cyan filly thought.
Wanting to prove her superiority, she started to maneuver between the branches. Turning left, she passed over a river and started zig zagging. Then Rainbow flew very close to the ground and reemerged in a completely different place.
She checked again.
"Impossible! How come?" Bob was still flying above her.
"It's on!" she grinned and used a large branch to swing herself in the opposite direction, rapidly gaining speed.
She looked up to see that Bob had to turn around.
Still to make sure Rainbow once again pulled off her disappearing trick.
Looking up, the cyan filly was satisfied as nopony was following her.
But suddenly.
She bumped into Bob, who was right in front of her.
"Now somepony is going to detention, don't do advanced maneuvers, without supervision."
"But....."
"It's even the third time you have broken the rules this month."
"But....."
"The headmaster will not be happy to hear this. "
"I must know. How did you catch me?" Rainbow wasn't worried about the possible detention.
"You still don't know a lot of things about flying."
"Huh?" Rainbow was surprised.
"Firstly, don't use the same trick twice."
"Well.....okay. What about the change of direction?"
"That's quite basic actually. Every pegasus should know, how to turn 180 degrees in the air."
"You must show me that."
"Only if you behave yourself."
"Piece of cake!" the cyan filly was overconfident.
Later that day three fillies were standing near the infamous Cloudsdale bakery. It had a sing saying that there was a 20% discount every Sunday on every kind of cookies. Another heralded a strange message "Free spider web!".
"Fr-free spider...w...web...." one of the fillies read carefully. They were standing a safe distance away so it was rather hard to see what the signs said.
"Huh...what's that?" the other one asked.
"Spider web."
"I can read you know."
"Well what is it?"
"I don't know.....they have many spiders.....so.....they sell spider webs."
"Who would use that?"
"It is possible to use them as threads I guess."
"Well, okay, why would a bakery do that? Don't they sell things like......cakes and stuff."
"Hmmm.....What do you think Fluttershy?"
"......ummm..." Fluttershy was too scared to follow the conversation, "....it's good....I guess....."
"Weirdo."
"Who is going in first then?"
".....ummmm....." Fluttershy wasn't able to finish.
"Fluttershy!......Show us how brave are you!"
"I....I...I....can't" when the danger was visible, it was hard to remain brave.
"Sissy!"
"...if...you insist...I-I guess...."
Fluttershy slowly approached the store. Only a few ponies were in the vicinity of the bakery, yet it was rather popular, many went in and out of it. She peeked through the window and quickly jumped back in surprise.
"It's your reflection stupid!" a voice from far away criticized.
"P-p-please come here....now.....if you don't mind of course....."
"What did you say?"
"H-help!" Fluttershy couldn't take it anymore.
"Okay.....sheeeesh."
Soon all the group was in front of the bakery.
"So, what do we have here?"
"Don't ask me."
"Fluttershy?"
".......M-m-monsters!" she revealed the possible horror that lurked in.
"I-I don't see anyone," the fright was now getting to everypony.
"They are invisible!" a possible theory was made up.
"...Y-yy-ou kkno-w g-ghosts don't exist."
"L-ll-liaar!"
"Just run! Run and hide!"
Two fillies were gone in two seconds flat.
As Fluttershy was already turning away, a pony in a green shirt and a white apron came out of the bakery.
"Whatc'ha standing there for? Come in! We are not closed - you see these doors open automatically so they don't need a knob."
Fluttershy couldn't say a word and followed the flow. Soon she found herself in a room with a counter on the right, a lot of tables and chairs. Some of theese she had never seen before - there were a few really high tables accompanied by long one-legged chairs. Also a lot of ponies were casually chatting in the bakery, eating cupcakes, not noticing her.
And then.....
Fluttershy saw the horror contained within and gasped. Several sharp blades were rotating on the ceiling, they were attached to it by a metal pole. Horrified she ran deeper into the store, believing that the way out was closed and looking for a place to hide.
No luck.
A black, terrifying beast was looking straight into her eyes. It had a very small mouth, three glowing ears, no eyes and a smooth metal skin.
"Pleas-e don't hurt me...."
Nothing happened, it stayed still, the ears did glow a bit brighter.
"...umm...hello, my name is Fluttershy, w-what's yours?" a change of tactic, maybe it was friendly.
Still nothing.
Only now she noticed that there was yet another sign on the left, which said :
"How to interact with the new vacuum lamp computer."
"Computer?" the yellow filly was puzzled.
"...ummm...you are....very nice....." she slowly patted it so it wouldn't get angry while she examined the sign, which had detailed instructions, most likely there to help those who have been attacked by this "Computer".
Fluttershy read "Although widely assumed so, the computer doesn't have a mouth. Firstly, to understand this concept a pony should realize that it is actually called a "button". The UPA (United Pony Association) assures you that the device will not bite off your fingers under any circumstances. "
"Device?" Fluttershy was clueless.
The text continued "This does not include the vacuum lamps commonly mistaken as ears, never touch them without the supervision of qualified personnel," she quickly pulled her hoof back. "Scientists all over Equestria recommend to use the term "belly button" while reffering to the button. It has been proved through extensive research that this term is a more understandable alternative. To turn on the computer a pony must press its belly button."
"Turn on?"
Fluttershy was ready to do anything to get away from this situation so she did as she was told.
The computer started to hum what appeared as satisfaction from the fullfillment of its demands.
A black board next to the sign, which she hadn't noticed before, began to glow and show text.
"Welcome," it said.
"Thank you," Fluttershy replied.
Suddenly a strange sound started playing, "Beeeeep, beeeeep, beeep".
Fluttershy quickly backed away in the corner, looking for an escape route. The doors were now open. She rushed towards them, accidentally running into several ponies, but the way was blocked by one group of them who had just gotten up from a table.
In a dire situation like this her wings could have helped, but the ceiling still had those terrible blades. Fluttershy jumped on the table, kicking away all the cups, and dived towards the door, then she hit the ground and rolled outside.
The fillies who had accompanied her were back, waiting near the entrance.
"Fluttershy, you look terrible, what happened?"
"It's horrible!......The m-m-monsters almost ate me! They have sharp blades, which don't let you out, I barely managed to escape!"
"Run away!"
Nopony needed to be warned twice, all the fillies took off and flew towards home.
They never again spoke about the things that had happened in the bakery.