Fluttershy was nervous; the pegasus was always nervous before a trip. As she and her usual group of five friends boarded Twilight's hot air balloon for the short ride up to Cloudsdale, Fluttershy couldn't help but wonder why Dash had picked her as her partner. Rainbow Dash had insisted that she enter the Best Young Flyers competition with her last month due to this year's new rule: all pegasi entering into the competition must enter in groups of two or more to perform a synchronized routine of aerial acrobatics. It was rumored that this unprecedented change in policy, along with other unusual laws, was ordered by Princess Celestia herself in order to promote a sense of unity among ponies in the wake of last year's Changeling attack on Canterlot, the capital of Equestria, which very nearly succeeded in ending the more-or-less unbroken peace and harmony that had pervaded the kingdom and its inhabitants for over a millennium during Celestia's reign.
Whatever the reason, Fluttershy felt honored that Rainbow would choose her as her first and only team partner. Fluttershy knew that even if she failed spectacularly it wouldn't affect their friendship in the slightest; Rainbow was, after all, the Element of Loyalty and the competition was just a game, right? Even so, she was still afraid that she couldn't live up to the strict standards set by the judges of the competition, who were none other than the world-famous Wonderbolts aerial team, and more importantly, the unspoken standards set by Rainbow herself. She had always considered herself a weak flier despite her somewhat renewed confidence after singlehoofedly saving the endeavor of almost a hundred pegasi to turn Ponyville's entire reservoir of water into clouds last spring. She found herself wishing the weather would just form on its own...
“We're here!” announced Twilight Sparkle, who slowed down the balloon with the purple aura of her unicorn magic.
“Mah god, it's always a might larger 'n you expect,” remarked Applejack, which received a nod of agreement from Twilight as the two stared.
Fluttershy craned her head to get a good look, blowing some stray strands of her pastel pink mane out of her view in the process. The place was indeed magnificent. It was a city populated by hundreds of thousands of pegasi. Made entirely of cloud, it floated gracefully in the sky near the outskirts of Ponyville. The city's snow white towers reached into the clear blue sky. There were massive cloud buildings constructed with Greco-Roman style columns, triangle-cut roofs and huge, sweeping archways. All around, various pegasi went about their daily routines. It was beautiful. Almost reason enough for her to move out of her cottage and move into a cloud apartment. Almost. She wouldn't trade her home and livelihood on the ground for anything.
Rainbow Dash was standing near their landing site, waving up at them.
“Hey! Over here!” she yelled. All five ponies on the balloon turned, noticing the rainbow-maned pegasus, and waved back. The balloon drifted lower and finally landed in a puff of white, cotton-like cloud. Rainbow Dash trotted up beside them.
“Ready to win a competition?” Dash asked, giving Fluttershy a hoof bump on the shoulder, to which she responded with a blush and a timid nod.
Rainbow shifted her focus to the whole group.
“Thanks guys for showing up to cheer us on; I never doubted that you would show, but it's nice to have everypony here.”
“Wouldn't miss it for the world,” Twilight said, immediately receiving nods of approval from the assembled group of friends.
“Woah there!” exclaimed Applejack, restraining an errant Pinkie Pie by the tail who was about to jump out of the balloon onto the cloud field where Twilight had parked.
“Y'all remember ya can't walk on those,” stated Applejack flatly. She was clearly a tad annoyed from having to deal with the pink earth pony's bottomless reserve of energy confined within a small space.
“Heh. Silly me!” said Pinkie with a slight giggle.
“I'll cast the walk-on-clouds spell on Applejack and myself, and Rarity, if you would please do the same to yourself and Pinkie,” Twilight half-ordered, taking charge of the situation if only for the sake of efficiency.
“Certainly dear,” replied the purple-maned unicorn.
They stepped out of the balloon and made their way to their accommodations with Pinkie Pie bouncing around in front of the group. When they made it to their cloud hotel Rarity explained that most of the lodging in the area was booked solid for the next week due to the competition and that the six of them had to share a three bed suite with only a single bathroom. Fluttershy wondered how anypony else would get a chance to use the facilities with the overly-proper Rarity spending hours getting ready every morning. She guessed she'd have to get used to four o'clock mornings, and fast; she wanted to be considerate, after all.
She was quite unsure as to how she would go about acquiring such a large amount of aerial skill in such a short time, especially when complicated with the inevitable Pinkie- and Rarity-induced sleep deprivation and her own limited skill set. Very carefully? She let out a nervous chuckle under her breath. Just thinking about the competition made her nervous, rather, even more nervous than she already was being in such a large city surrounded by so many ponies. Fluttershy admonished herself for thinking that way. Rainbow Dash would be content just spending time with her friends while doing what she loved: flying. She had nothing to worry about and amazing friends to support her.
No matter how much the yellow-coated pegasus told herself that, she couldn't quite bring herself to believe it.
Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had spent the better part of the previous evening standing in an obscenely long line while their friends went sightseeing. It was now early morning. The sun had just been raised over the edge of the cloud city and bright morning sunlight was streaming through the open window directly into Rainbow’s face. She groaned, leaning over to check the time. The hotel clock hadn’t been set and was showing a blinking 12:00.
“Celestia-damn it,” she mumbled. She had finally fallen asleep after a night of worrying. Not that she’d admit that to anypony else. She got out of bed and trotted over to the couch in front of the television, collapsing in the middle seat. She switched on the television with the remote she found on the table. The television showed a screen that stated simply “Welcome to La Parcela Inn & Suites. Front Desk: #1212. Channel 99 for TV guide.” Dash keyed in 99 on the remote. The corner of the guide finally revealed to her that it was 6:42 in the morning. She let out a sigh. She knew that she needed to wake up anyway as she had less than five hours to practice before she and Fluttershy made their way to the Wonderbolt Stadium to perform. Rainbow decided to awaken Fluttershy. She trotted over and quietly opened the door to her room.
“Rise and shine, sleepy head,” she said softly. Fluttershy snapped awake with a squeak of surprise, pulling the blanket over her head.
“Easy there. Sorry for scaring ya.” Fluttershy sat upright and removed herself from under the covers, staring at Dash with one sea green eye, the other hidden behind her disheveled mane.
“Morning,” she said almost inaudibly.
“Morning,” replied Dash, “Let’s go get some practice in; no need to wake the others.”
“O...Okay,” replied Fluttershy. They crept out the door and decided to skip the elevator, taking off from the twelfth floor balcony. They banked west toward the stadium and continued the rest of the twenty minute journey in relative silence save for the soft sound of their wings flapping and the air streaming by. As they approached the stadium they noticed that there were a few other teams of various sizes preparing for the show. Fluttershy noticed that she and Dash weren’t the only duo competing, though there were some groups as large as seven. Fluttershy was so nervous she could barely fly straight. She hoped the other ponies would be nice; she didn’t think she could handle any trash-talking while trying to remember her complex flight routine with Dash.
Their practice went surprisingly well; performing the flight maneuvers that Fluttershy had been practicing for months took her mind off the impending performance. Dash had decided to cut today's last practice short; she reasoned that if any particular part of their routine hadn’t been fixed by now it never will be, and they spent the majority of their short three-hour practice going through the motions of their now streamlined, and substantially shorter, flight routine. They now had two hours left, which wasn’t enough time to make going back to the hotel a viable option. So they sat together on the top row of the stadium, both engrossed in silently comparing their routine with those of the competition.
Dash and Fluttershy flew down from the top row to meet their friends outside. Fluttershy couldn’t help but realize how big the stadium looked from this angle. All those seats... filled with ponies silently judging her performance...
“Fluttershy!” Twilight yelled for the third time, waving a hoof in front of the pegasus’s face. She snapped out of whatever she was worrying about to see a concerned group of five friends staring at her. She blushed.
“Y...yes?” she mumbled.
“Darling, are you alright? You simply fainted about twenty minutes ago and Twilight has been trying to rouse you ever since,” said Rarity.
Fluttershy now realized she was laying on her side, and carefully righted herself into a sitting position..“S...sorry; I’m just so nervous,” she explained, “What if I disappoint those thousands of ponies? What if I disappoint Rainbow? I c...can’t go out there, I simply can’t.”
Dash pulled Fluttershy into a hug.
After several seconds, she held Fluttershy away and looked into her eyes. “Look, um, you don’t have to go out there if you don’t want to. I’ll understand. And if you do, there’s nothing you could do that could possibly make me think any less of you.” Fluttershy smiled and began to tear up again. She felt much better than before, knowing firsthand that disappointing Dash was a non-issue, but she still couldn’t appear in front of the crowd. There was an awkward silence. Both pegasi attempted to speak at the same time, with Rainbow promptly deciding to let Fluttershy go first.
“I... I want to do this, I really do. Ever since flight school all I wanted was for somepony to believe that I’m just as capable as anypony else. That you invited me to be your one and only partner for the competition meant a great deal to me, but that’s also why I’m so nervous. I didn’t want to let you down. I didn’t want to let them down,” she said, gesturing toward the entrance to the now mostly full stadium with a forehoof.
“I understand,” said Rainbow, “and as I said, there’s nothing you can do to make me think any less of you.” They both smiled, and this time Fluttershy pulled Rainbow into another hug. After about a minute they separated, staring into each other’s eyes once more, this time a determined look on Fluttershy’s face. She looked like she would almost do it.
“Let’s do this,” Dash half-asked.
“Let’s do this!” exclaimed Fluttershy at her trademark volume. They bumped hooves and trotted toward the entrance, the other four trailing close behind, noting Pinkie’s uncharacteristic silence during the exchange.
“You know,” said Rainbow matter-of-factly, “I’m not so good at this mushy stuff.”
“Give yourself more credit; you were a natural,” said Fluttershy, stifling a giggle. This elicited a shoulder tap from Rainbow. They both laughed, the worry about the impending competition seeming to melt away leaving only determination and a sense of unity between them.
Fluttershy stood at the edge of the platform. Peeking over, she saw that all eyes were fixed upon her and Dash. The crowd was waiting for the next performance, which happened to be theirs.
“Well, they aren’t gonna wait forever,” said Dash, adjusting her flight goggles. Fluttershy nodded and smiled at Rainbow. They both backed up ten steps then galloped full speed over the edge, spreading their wings and taking flight. They both instinctively noted the subtle air currents and made microscopic adjustments to their wingtips. The two pegasi drifted closer to each other until they were less than a centimeter apart, each so close they could feel the lift created by the other’s wings but staying just far enough away the powerful downdraft of the other’s wings.
This first maneuver called for them to gain speed gliding very, very close to each other in a parabolic arc, tilting up at the last second to glide centimeters from the cloud floor of the stadium, which was approaching the two pegasi quite fast as they gained speed. The both subtly angled up, the tips of their hooves carving tiny channels in the cloud so close below. Fluttershy estimated they were now cruising at over two hundred kilometers an hour.
The next part of their routine required every bit of that speed and more. They flew just above the audience, outside of the disqualification zone, of course, and once near the top of the stands in front of the judges, angled up once more into a zero-degree vertical climb. Fluttershy flapped with all her might to keep up with Dash.
Now that they were about four hundred meters above the audience and with most of their previous speed converted into a quite hefty amount of gravitational potential, they both sharply angled downward into a vertical drop with Fluttershy maneuvering to a position close behind Rainbow, her forehooves almost touching Dash’s hind legs. This next trick required all of Rainbow’s concentration and then some to work. Though the two pegasi were already speeding toward the center of the stadium floor far below, they continued to flap hard and gain speed.
A V-shaped, rainbow-colored shockwave began to form around Dash. This next part was critical. This was why they needed several months of practice. Rainbow Dash breathed in and push for one final burst of speed. Then it happened. About a hundred meters from the stadium roof, a huge circular rainbow shockwave emanated from the area around the two ponies as they broke the sound barrier and filled the sky above the stadium, which shook with the force the collapsing wavefront emitted. Windows were broken and the goggles of both pegasi were slightly cracked, but the two pegasi were unfazed. They had just performed the only two-pony Sonic Rainboom in history.
The both angled sharply in opposite directions, Rainbow to the left and Fluttershy to the right. They once again skimmed the cloud floor and the audience, now at twice the speed. Once even with the opposite edges of the roof, each pegasus braked sharply and perched on the ledge, each standing on her hind legs with a forehoof held high in the air. Perfectly timed cyan and yellow fireworks burst behind each pony. Dash made a mental note to thank Pinkie Pie for setting that up.
The crowd of thousands was silent for several seconds, until a certain four ponies in the top row began whistling and cheering. The crowd promptly erupted into loud yells, whistles and hoof stomps. The three Wonderbolt judges whispered amongst themselves, nodding in agreement. They held up three large cards, each with the number ten printed on the front.
