“Could you please try to come back home right away this time? I need you to water the garden and--”
“And fold laundry, I know!” Scootaloo shouted while she hefted her bags. She headbutted the front door open, snatched her scooter from where it leaned against the front of the house, and trotted quickly out into the not-quite-daylight. For the last few years, escaping her mom's worry and suspicion had been as much a part of the morning as brushing her teeth. “It'll all be done by the time you're home! Bye mom see you tonight I'll tell you all about school!”
Maybe her mom didn't feel the need to say anything extra this time, or maybe Scootaloo was just too fast out the door to hear it. Both ways suited her just fine. She came to a stop on the sidewalk, jumped onto her scooter... and just stood for a moment. Her street was always quiet around this time; it was too early for ponies to be going to work, and anyway not many other children lived so far from the school. The silence was perfect for the most important part of the morning ritual. A gentle breeze tossed her tangled mane at the perfect angle. She'd forgotten her helmet again, she realized. Good. Rainbow Dash didn't need a helmet, so neither did she.
Scootaloo untucked her wings from beneath her saddlebags and flapped as fast as she could. She couldn't manage long strokes like the older pegasi she'd seen, but rapid flapping worked well enough for her. Her wings buzzed so quickly that they started to make a fluttering sound, like a floor fan set to High. From two wheels and one hoof she lifted off just enough so that she could balance on only the wheels of the scooter, at a complete stop. The smirk that Scootaloo's friends knew her for spread across her face as she leaned forward—and flew.
Whenever there was a particularly straight, smooth section of sidewalk, Scootaloo jumped and only held onto the scooter with her forehooves so that she could feel what it was like to glide along without the rattle of the scooter’s wheels against the concrete. When she jumped, she kicked her rear hooves out and lowered her head in order to be more “aerodynamic,” as Rainbow Dash called it. She wanted to believe that she looked the way stunt flyers did when they were trying to push their maximum speed, except that her front hooves were still resting on the handlebars. She managed a really long jump, thanks to the lift from flapping her wings—at least six seconds, it felt like!
That small victory left a smile on Scootaloo's face that stayed there all the way to school. A few neighbors and classmates waved as she rattled past, but mostly Scootaloo was too busy looking skyward, letting the early morning air filter through her mane. The weather crew’s morning shift would be starting around now...
There. A living rainbow streaked across the sky, darting from cloud to cloud. To Scootaloo, that multicolored streak was a symbol of hope, a finish line stretched across the open blue. Just like a natural rainbow, Rainbow Dash and her glittering contrail were usually miles away from the streets and trees, out of the reach of things like gravity, parents, and school. Sometimes Scootaloo pedaled harder to try to stay underneath Rainbow Dash’s trail longer, but always she fell short of her idol’s speed, no matter how hard and fast she propelled her wheels over the sidewalk.
The ride couldn't last forever, and soon Scootaloo found herself leaning her scooter in its usual place against the front of the schoolhouse. Inside, everypony else was already in their seats, and Miss Cheerilee was just emerging from her office in the back. Scootaloo slid into the seat between Rumble and Amber, just in time to join the chorus of “Good morning, miss Cheerilee!”
Every recess, Scootaloo liked to climb the play structure. Miss Cheerilee used to let her ride her scooter on the sidewalk in front of the school during recess, but not since last year's incident. That little added rule still got Scootaloo a little mad every time she thought about it—she rode her scooter to and from school every single day, but she wasn't allowed to ride it during recess?
“Hey, Scootaloo?”
Scootaloo looked down from her perch into the eyes of her fellow Crusader. “Yeah, Apple Bloom?”
“I told Sweetie Belle to hold a swing for you. You always like going on the swings, right?”
Scootaloo smiled. “I'm not allowed to do what I want on the swings any more, remember?” no jumping off of moving swings was another item on the long list of playground rules that had been made just for Scooatloo.
“Oh.” Apple Bloom looked a little disappointed. “Well.. how about the see-saw?”
“Nah.” Scootaloo jumped off the top of the playstructure, beating wildly against the air as she lifted off. Apple Bloom laughed and clapped her hooves together when Scootaloo managed to hang in the air, suspended by her rapid flapping.
When Scootaloo heard a sharp whistle from the door of the schoolhouse, she immediately dropped out of the air, landing on the grass with a loud thump. “Sorry!” she shouted over at Miss Cheerilee, who had chosen that exact moment to conduct a sweep of the playground. “I'll stop jumping off things!” Almost every colt and filly on the playground was staring, and Scootaloo cringed under their collective gaze.
Meanwhile, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were cheering. The sound of her friends clapping for her raised Scootaloo’s spirits until getting in trouble in front of everypony didn’t even matter any more. She trotted towards the swings. She knew she would be forced to sit inside for the rest of recess if Miss Cheerilee caught her practicing again, but Scootaloo didn't want to be out on the playground if she couldn't practice her flying. Besides, wasn’t it Miss Cheerilee who told her to always chase her dreams, no matter what?
Whenever she was sentenced to sitting inside during recess, Scootaloo liked to trace the grain of the wooden desk with her hoof. She imagined that the contours were clouds and wind-currents, and she traced her flight path through them, letting the flow of the “air” propel the tip of her hoof into wild twists and loops.
Scootaloo heard Miss Cheerilee whistle again. The rest of the class came in from recess and took their seats around Scootaloo. She brought her imaginary joy-flight to a landing on the bottom edge of her desk and brought out her notebook. Scootaloo sometimes got in trouble for not taking proper notes, so she usually doodled in her notebook while pretending to pay attention.
The Wonderbolts had their smoke, and Rainbow Dash had her rainbow, so Scootaloo needed something too. She doodled alternating smoke rings of orange and purple, and jagged zig-zag patterns that branched like forked lightning. Every stunt flyer, Scootaloo had long since decided, needed a signature contrail like Rainbow Dash’s.
Scootaloo didn't manage to avoid detention. She had been absorbed in drawing what a pegasus contrail that branched out like forked lightning might look like when Miss Cheerilee called her name and asked her a question, something about explorers and the Eastern Lands. When Scootaloo couldn't answer, Miss Cheerilee sentenced her to fifteen minutes after class. Claiming that she had to go home to water the plants and do the laundry got the sentence shortened to five minutes, but that was still five minutes too long. She spent the entire time tapping her hooves loudly on the desk until Miss Cheerilee finally let her out a minute and a half early.
To Scootaloo, it wasn't parole, it was a head start. As soon as she was out the door and on her scooter, she blasted singlemindedly towards the clubhouse.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the sensation of losing the ground from beneath her wheels terrified Scootaloo. Now, she lived for that feeling. The thrill of danger had become an addiction, and like all addictions, it demanded more and more in order to be satisfied.
The rail. The bank. The gap. There was entire secret scooter park here, the result of many afternoons with Apple Bloom and many more lies to Scootaloo’s mom about just what Scootaloo was doing after school every day. Usually she would buzz her wings as hard as she could while riding onto and over each hazard, pushing herself for speed and lift to make even the smallest jump into a flight. This time, though, she was saving her strength for the big finale.
The launch pad. The box. The hurdle. Scootaloo hardly even had to think about hitting each jump and defying every hazard. She had mastered every element of the park, except for one.
“Pretty cool, Scootaloo!”
At the sound of that voice, Scootaloo jumped off her still-moving scooter, not even watching as it crashed noisily into one of the ramps. She wasn’t worried about it; that thing refused to break no matter how hard Scootaloo abused it. “Glad you made it, Sweetie Belle. Where’s--”
“Here I am!” Apple Bloom and her distinctive hair-tie came trudging down the path, lugging two overfilled saddlebags. “I brought all the tools I could think of, since, y’know, you said you had special plans and all--”
“Sorry, Apple Bloom, but that’s not the kind of plan I had for today.” Scootaloo just smirked at her friends for a moment, waiting for the moment of realization to hit. It didn’t come. Apple Bloom pouted as she shrugged her saddlebags onto the ground.
“Well, come on! What kind of plans did you think I was talking about?”
Still no answer.
“Ugh!” Scootaloo rolled her eyes and pointed at the one ramp that she’d never used. “That! I’m finally going to hit THAT one, and I wanted you guys to watch!”
Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, in perfect unison, both looked over in the direction that Scootaloo was pointing, then back to Scootaloo, and then:
"What? Really?” they exclaimed in stereo incredulity.
To compare this ramp to any of the others in the park was like comparing a drizzle to a hurricane. After building it, all three Crusaders agreed that it had been a mistake.
The ramp itself was wicked enough, a thirty degree slope that ended abruptly after a few feet. Just to make sure it was extra dangerous, there was also a downslope leading into it which could theoretically be used to build speed.
If it had been just a big ramp, Scootaloo would’ve mastered it within a few days of building it. The reason she still wouldn’t go near it was what waited on the other side. Specifically, there was nothing on the other side. The ramp led right into a steep gorge. The logic had been that the steep downslope would make a good landing surface while falling very fast.
Scootaloo ran over to her scooter and set it upright, then flicked a lock of mane away from her eyes with a dramatic flourish. “That ramp’s the only one I haven’t nailed yet. And today’s the day I’m gonna nail it!”
Scootaloo didn’t say it, but hitting the ramp wasn’t really her big plan--just something that would help her accomplish it. The mere thought of the actual plan was making Scootaloo’s heart beat harder with excitement... and fear.
For a moment, as she pushed her scooter up the lead-in ramp, Scootaloo was worried that her friends would try to stop her--or was she hoping that they would give her an excuse to chicken out?
She should have known better.
“You can do it, Scootaloo!” a shrill little voice called out from the ground.
With one hoof on her scooter and both forehooves on the handlebars, Scootaloo suddenly realized that she was short of breath and that her teeth were clenched so hard that her jaw hurt. Just one little push, and she would be screaming down the slope towards the one thing in the park that she didn’t know if she could handle.
“Go, Scootaloo!”
“Let me see you fly, Scootaloo!”
When the word “fly” reached her ears, Scootaloo suddenly stopped seeing the drop at the end of the ramp, and started seeing the blue sky that it pointed towards. For a moment, she thought she saw a rainbow contrail streak across the sky, far in the distance.
One little step. One light push sent Scootaloo was down the drop. She quickly picked up more speed than she’d ever felt before. She wanted to cry, or at least to bail before it was too late--the scooter wouldn’t go over the edge if she crashed, and even if it did, it was tough enough--but instead she held her front wheel steady and buzzed her wings as hard as she could, pushing herself for even more speed.
She reached the bottom of the ride-in. She hardly even had room to be afraid before she hit the upslope. She felt a brief wrenching sensation as she hit the curved bottom of the ramp, the point of no return.
She had time to mentally run through the practiced maneuver just once in the split-second between the beginning of the climb and the launch into empty space. Bend the knees, lean forward, extend the forehooves up and away from the handlebars, and launch into the open sky.
The end of the ramp came, sending the filly and her scooter into the air. Scootaloo bent her knees, leaned forward, and flailed as her legs straightened, finding no resistance. She lifted her forehooves off the handlebars and keeled sharply forward, her scooter drifting away from her in the free-fall.
She found herself staring directly at the ground with her rear hooves pointing towards the sky. When she saw how far she had to fall, she finally realized that her plan had gone terribly wrong, and a horrible shock of fear shot through her entire body. She’d crashed plenty of times. This wasn’t a normal crash.
Fluttering her wings desperately slowed her down a little bit, even while she was head over heels in the air. As such, Scootaloo had plenty of time to feel what it was like to fall from the sky. Then, finally, the back of her un-helmeted head met the rocks lining the riverbed.
