For days now, the weather had been nothing but uncharacteristically warm and muggy. Light from the noon sun beat over her head like an unpluggable shower of heat, manifesting itself in the sweltering beads of sweat that rolled down her brow and the slight fog that built where her long lashes touched the sunglass lenses. She gave an annoyed groan as a hoof wiped over her forehead, as if she were trying to swat away the relentless beams.
It might have been enjoyed, this blistering day. Maybe from under a sunshade, from a shimmering, turquoise poolside, and from over a glistening, chilled glass of lemonade.
Pink lemonade.
With frozen blueberries floating in it, bobbling like delicious little Hearthswarming ornaments.
Oh yes.
"Ugh, hey!" The annoyingly-shrill yelp yanked her unceremoniously back to the ground, or, at least, three or so miles above it.
She hmphed under her breath, turning to face the source of the cry, razor-sharp sunlight glancing from her glasses, making them appear almost white. "What's the problem?" She demanded.
A pink-coated, yellow-haired pegasus flitted in place, arms crossed over her chest like a fussy foal. "He took my cloud!" She exclaimed, pointing out a colt in the distance who looked more than a little confused.
She grimaced, the sour taste of annoyance sliding down her throat. "Your cloud? Your cloud? Ughhh..." She sighed, resisting with all her might the urge to pull a grand and well-deserved facehoof. "Get it together, cadet. There're plenty to go around."
Never had there been a more valid truth spoken. The sky was littered with piles of fluff, piles of fluff that should long since have been thrashed into vapor.
Her top cadet on a deserved day's leave after a tornado fiasco, her second best dishonorable discharged and stripped of her badge left her with an relatively ineffective and woefully-clumsy team. They were the last, gooey dregs of milk left at the bottom of a bowl of hyper-sugared cereal.
These were the lovely spoils of the captain.
As the sun continued to give her a thorough walloping, Spitfire decided that there was no way that there could be much more time left on the clock. The cadets had been given a couple of hours--extremely generous, if one were to ask the captain--but it had felt like a century and a half.
She glanced at her watch. Thankfully, some cosmic force had descended upon her, pulling her away from this devastating scene in the form of a few seconds left of their time.
3.
2.
1.
"Time!" The flame-haired captain declared loudly, slamming down the button on her stopwatch. One blow of a whistle yielded one very neat--she had made sure that standing in blade-straight lines was one of the first things they learned upon arrival--row of cadets.
The site was silent for a good ten seconds as Spitfire paced the line, a cloud of intimidation following her. At the end of her lap, she faced back upward, eyes narrowed to slits behind her aviators as she scanned the skies.
A deep, dissatisfied breath filled her lungs. "Well, cadets," she began. The row of pegasi froze. "You remember your task, correct?"
A wary chorus of 'yes, ma'am' rose from the group.
The captain continued. "Well, then," She stepped slowly toward a trembling stallion, nose to nose as she trust a hoof into the air. "Does this look like a completed task to you?"
The field of clouds made her point quite clear.
Not waiting for a response from the tongue-tied Wonderbolt-wannabe, Spitfire turned on point, finally giving in to a glorious facehoof.
Really? Was this the haul this recruiting season? The pinnacle of the Equestrian airforce. Delightful.
"You know what," The fiery mare sighed. Her sighs had become increasingly commonplace in want of her two best fliers. "Dismissed."
A quiet mumble rose from the line of cadets, daring the first among them to heed the command. Yet, no one did.
Spitfire faced them once more, frustration apparent across her icily-beautiful face. "Are you all deaf, newbies? Scram!"
Her own Royal Canterlot vocal variety sent her understudies scattering.
*~*~*
A lion? No, no, definitely not.
Princess Celestia? Certainly not.
Spitfire squinted just a little more and leaned back just a little further in her executive's chair. The ceiling, bland as a ceiling could be, entertained her incredibly bored, frustrated mind as she found shapes and figures in the lame, lame white plaster.
In her discontent with her cadets, the captain had cancelled the afternoon's exercises. At the time, the decision seemed like a perfectly good way to escape her hideously incompetent team; however, now, the boredom drilling into her brain begged to differ.
The captain shifted in her chair, carelessly throwing her hind legs onto her cluttered desk. She folded her hooves, one over the other, over her stomach, right under the decorations on her coat that currently had no purpose, and replaced her gaze up to that terribly boring ceiling of imaginary shapes.
If not Celestia, maybe Luna? The scattered blobs of paint sort of looked like the stars in her mane. Probably.
Actually, that streak of paint looked almost like a trail, a trail of color, perhaps following a pegasus...
Lightning Dust.
Rainbow Dash.
"Ugggghhhh." Spitfire slapped a hoof over her eyes in desperation.
Clear Celestia-damned skies.
Sliding her hoof down her eyes, the captain rolled her head to the side, staring absently at her desk with lowered brows, impatiently tapping one hoof on the other slowly.
Tap.
Tap.
...Tap.
Another sigh seeped out of her just before her eyes fell on a small object, lying amidst the scattered pens and papers on her desk. The blinding light streaming in from the window behind her seemed to converge on the object, gleaming off of the silver enamel.
The woeful captain extended a hoof, touching the piece lightly before picking it up. Rolling it around, feeling its smoothness, reminded Spitfire of just how useless the badge was in her hoof rather than on the breast of a good flier.
Granted, Rainbow Dash would return soon. The team would at least have her, and she was definitely as good as five, six of them combined.
In that case, fine. Though, wouldn't it be rather unfair to the prodigious pony? To decimate each exercise without a hope of competition? A bit of a challenge was, after all, healthy, right?
And then there wasn't to mention the time in between now and Rainbow Dash's return. The time during which the captain would have nothing but her bumbling cadets to liquefy her brain into a festering pool of disbelief at how incompetent the haul this year was.
And yet, there was talent being wasted. Lightning Dust, albeit reckless and cocky, was an excellent flier, and would certainly be an asset to he team. Then again, she herself had stripped the badge from the pegasus, and it wasn't as though the captain could simply undermine her own rules. Or could she?
Spitfire stared at the badge in her hoof, no longer seeing, lost in thought.
Of course, Lightning Dust couldn't regain her position as Lead Pony. That wasn't happening. Wing Pony, though, was alright. She could still do good work then, even if not on a pedestal.
With that, the captain came to a decision.
She leaned forward, holding down the button on her speaker. "Hey Sarge," she spoke into the intercom. "Send Lightning Dust into my office for me."
It took hardly a few minutes for the door to open, and the green pegasus to be escorted in, head-bowed and looking as defiant as ever. The stallion beside her nodded curtly, announcing his delivery. Spitfire returned the nod. "You may go."
He turned on heel and rigidly left, leaving the captain alone with the discharged cadet, who hadn't said a word. Spitfire cleared her throat, crossing her hooves on her desk.
"So, Lightning Dust," The pegasus looked up from beneath her furrowed brows. "Do you know why you're here?"
Lightning Dust held her tongue, the air around her virtually shimmering with heat and defiance.
"Not talking, are we?" Spitfire leaned slightly back in her chair, surveying the pony before her with half-slitted eyes.
Again, there came no reply. The captain was beginning to grow frustrated. She was not used to being ignored.
"Do you know why I discharged you?"
"I was reckless, ma'am." The words dripped from Lightning Dust's lips like sour, toxic goo. Even after she said it, the distaste lingered in her features.
"Well then, you wouldn't like your position back then, would you?" The fire-maned pony spoke slowly, touching around the matter with the venomous stealth of a snake slithering around its prey.
Lightning Dust was obviously caught unaware by the suggestion. "What?"
"I said," Spitfire left her desk, slowly approaching the pegasus, who stood solid. "Do you want your position back?" Her stare bore holes clear through Lightning Dust's eyes.
"I would, ma'am." She firmly replied.
"Will you work hard for it? Will you do what it takes?" The capitain asked, only a few inches away from the other mare.
Lightning Dust's exterior began to crack, but her voice remained composed. "Anything, ma'am."
Ideas followed by impulse flashed through Spitfire's mind; just for that second, she let her mind wander. The mare had always fallen a bit more in tune with her rash side herself, rational thought blending more into the fray. Still, this was not where she expected the discussion to go, but hell, she was already there.
"Anything?" She spoke in a low voice, purring and circling Lightning Dust like a panther.
The green mare involuntarily drew in a sharp breath, standing stock-straight and still, eyes straight ahead of her, but weakness beginning to spread in her legs. Despite her harshness, intimidation, and venomocity, Lightning Dust, like everyone else, recognized that the captain was insanely, insanely hot.
"...Anything." She breathed, feeling Spitfire's muzzle just barely graze the back of her neck. The heat lingering in the atmosphere was almost tangible.
"...Mmm...Okay then." The touch left Lightning Dust's neck as Spitfire withdrew, leaving the green mare to wonder if the saucily seductive move was nothing more than a cruel joke whose by-product was the heat it had left under her collar.
In a moment, however, it returned; Lightning Dust's breath came in short pants through her nose as she felt the soft golden muzzle trace down the fur of the back of her neck and to just over her shoulder. While she could not see the captain in her ministrations, the green pegasus could feel every single motion that the other mare made, traveling right down to the pit of her stomach.
Lightning Dust didn't turn her head, staring directly forward as the entire surrealism of the situation slowly sunk in. She had surely toppled head first into a vintage, overdone boss-employee fantasy she herself may have dreamt up in one of the several lonely nights, but the present was a reality she would not soon wake up from.
It wasn't like she wanted to, anyway.
Spitfire continued, trailing up and down from behind Lightning Dust's head, singing her way down in heat. She weaved around the other mare as silently and fluently as a cat, moving right beside her, close enough to nip gently but threateningly at her ear.
Lightning stayed statuesque, rooted to the ground through her hooves; if she moved, it seemed, her legs might have given up on her. A tiny sound came from the depth of her throat before she could grasp it and reign it in.
It did not go unnoticed.
Satisfied with the vulnerable reaction from the rough-and-tumble mare, Spitfire giggled smokily, like a cat's purr, into her ear, prompting another shiver to run down Lightning Dust's spine. The slow stripping of her tough facade was becoming unbearable.
Lightning Dust groaned quietly in frustration through her gritted teeth. It was one thing to be called into the office of her superior to be berated; she could handle it with hardly more than a flick of her tail, so little did the opinion of others bother the independent mare. However, to be called in and slowly, and ever so painfully seduced to the point of combustion was another matter entirely.
Still, despite the screaming fire that raged in her abdomen and the purring Fire that nuzzled her ear, Lightning Dust remained motionless.
Then, finally a bit of the ever-expanding pressure that had been building up inside the green mare was released as Spitfire moved in for the kill, sinking their lips together. She kissed the other pegasus as gently as the beat of a butterfly's wing, but it couldn't have done more for the raw arousal of the green mare than if the captain had just pitted her over and rutted her brains out right then and there.
The golden mare deepened the kiss, slipping her tongue into Lightning's mouth, which became a battleground for dominance. The captain's scent--something earthy and natural, perhaps pine, mixed with the fresh, floral scent of honeysuckle--was unbearably tantalizing to Lightning Dust, whose mind went on the fritz and every coherent thought in her head was savagely beaten to death by the spiked club of seduction that was her superior.
Eventually, the captain broke the embrace, making a beeline of soft nips down the inside of Lightning Dust's throat, earning a tiny gasp for each one. She settled near the crook of her neck and suddenly, unexpectedly, bit down hard.
Lighting's eyes shot open wide, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks as something more powerful than she knew stirred within her. Without a moment's hesitation, she flew at the golden mare, pinning her against the wall with surprising force.
Still, and even Lightning Dust herself knew it, Spitfire could have thrown her off without much difficulty, yet, she didn't.
The green mare attacked the golden mare, crashing their lips together in a kiss heated to solar extent. Unable to move and trapped beneath Lightning Dust's lips, Spitfire moaned into her mouth.
"Y-you know this is--aahh--insubordination," She choked out, "I could have your flank for this, cadet."
Lightning Dust pulled back, a challenging smirk. spread wide across her features. "Oh, I don't think that's happening, ma'am." It felt so good to have control back into her own hooves as the mare bit down the pinned pegasus's throat. Spitfire buried her muzzle into her captor's shoulder and stifled another moan.
"What? You like that?" The green mare knowingly asked in a breathy voice, grinning into the golden fur. She bit down a little harder and the captain almost squealed, confirming the answer to her inquiry.
A sudden realization hit the fiery and infernally-aroused mare like a bolt of electricity. Wasn't she supposed to be the dominant one? Wasn't this her lesson in discipline?
With aid from her wings, Spitfire pushed the both of them over, carelessly clearing everything off of her desk with a hoof and a clatter as she threw Lightning Dust onto the surface. The green mare's gasp of surprise was nipped in the bud by a quick kiss from the other pegasus, who grinned almost evilly above her.
"You know," she began in a low voice, leaning over the mare and slowly beginning to place kisses down her chest. "Here at the Academy, there are certain things we value." She hummed the last word into the soft coat of Lightning's stomach, eliciting a shudder.
"Y-yeah?"
"Probably one of the most important being," A still, deadly pause as Spitfire reached the immobilized mare's pelvis. She shot back up, taking the edge of the green mare's ear between her teeth as she whispered into it with a smirk. "...Discipline."
The moment the word rolled from her lips, her hoof slid down Lightning's form, rumpling her fur, and connected with the area that made the mare moan aloud and close her eyes.
Spitfire moved her hoof in concentric circles, increasing the pressure in time with the increasing gasps and moans that came to her, gift-wrapped rewards of her expert ministrations. One hoof occupied, she used the other to prop herself up,
hovering over the other mare, who lay flat, one hind leg wrapped around the small of the captain's back, drawing her inescapably near.
"Mmmh, that feels good, doesn't it, Lightning Dust?" Spitfire growled into her ear, playful yet cruel.
"Aaahhhh...yes..." The mare's head lolled around on her shoulders, eyes shut in bliss.
"Yes what?"
She gasped again. "Yes ma'am."
Spitfire smiled into Lightning's ear, her eyelids sinking smokily lower. "Wouldn't you like to have it feel better?"
"...Yes, ma'am."
The answer was all Spitfire needed to break away, gliding down the mare's stomach, and halting only a mere few centimeters from the junction between her legs. Lightning Dust thrust her hips upward, moaning in frustration, but was held down by a firm hoof.
"Mmhmm, and discipline includes..." She dragged her teeth along Lightning's thigh, feeling her squirm beneath the touch. "...control."
With that, she sank her tongue into the wriggling mare's sex, dragging it upward toward the apex with painstaking measure. Lightning threw her head back in rapture, her eyes finding focus on a point on the ceiling as the strikingly hot captain's tongue circled around from below.
One of her hooves found its way down, however; Spitfire could feel it running through her already chronically-wild hair. The sensation sent a bolt of ice through the captain, and she could feel her arousal grow helplessly, despite any effort to quell it herself.
She groaned quietly against Lightning Dust, and was immediately complemented by another sound from the green pegasus as the sound reverberated inside her. Another flick of the tongue gifted her with another whimper, and it was all the encouragement the golden pegasus needed to keep her mouth busy. On impulse, she grabbed the hay-colored, two-tone tail beneath her and tugged hard. The green mare squealed cutely in potent pleasure and pain.
Lightning Dust began to rock, her hips moving back and forth over the wood of the desk upon which she was propped, her twitching tail tickling Spitfire's stomach. She entwined her hooves into the captain's fiery mane, tugging light as Spitfire grasped her hips, keeping her level. The pleasured pony heavily reared her head up, looking down at the golden pegasus and, for a brief moment, amber eyes met amber eyes.
Upon meeting Lightning's gaze, Spitfire grinned lazily, her tongue still buried inside her folds. The sight alone sent the mare reeling, and she felt her orgasm approaching with the threat of a freight train.
Spitfire felt it too, the contractions beginning to close around her tongue. In a moment's notion of impulse and borderline sadism, she withdrew.
Lightning Dust could not believe it. "Wha-? Come on, Spitfire, don't do this to me..."
For once, the captain didn't mind to hear her first name called; in fact, it sounded awfully sexy when rolled off Lightning Dust's tongue in pre-orgasmic desperation.
"Control, remember?" She laughed saucily, winding back up Lightning's quivering body and kissing her gently. She could taste herself on Spitfire's tongue. It was guiltily erotic. "Do I have to repeat myself, cadet?"
Lightning Dust grunted, the longing for release becoming all-consuming and impossible to ignore as it shredded through her sex.
Spitfire resumed her preening, biting softly along her cadet's jawline. Although she herself was at a nuclear point of arousal in the form of the wetness rolling down her inner thighs, the military value of control was one of the first she'd learned as a cadet herself. She settled instead on marking Lightning Dust with her teeth, a vampire marking its helpless victim.
"You don't think it's fair, do you?" She asked coyly, "That you should get all the pleasure? This is my lesson, isn't it?"
Lightning Dust panted, her flush deepening as she grasped the implication at which Spitfire was gleaning. "No, you're right, it's not fair, ma'am."
"Well then," she continued, whispering coarsely and harshly into Lightning Dust's ear, which twitched. "What's stopping me from just rutting you to the ground right now like the pathetic little filly you are?"
It was incredible; even her threats that came out as intimidating as a feral cat's snarl sounded like the calls of a succubus to Lightning Dust, who whimpered again.
"Do it." She spoke in a raspy voice, thick with a crazed lust.
Spitfire gave a derisive laugh again. This was her game. "What do you want, Lightning Dust? Be specific."
"Rut me hard." She breathed. "Ma'am."
The extent of her self-control was met as Spitfire descended, pushing against the other pegasus roughly, slamming both of them hard onto the wood. She held the minty-green hooves down with her own, arching her back as she thrust down again. She stifled a moan in her throat as satisfaction finally began to show its face, but Lightning Dust, who was already walking the edge, almost cried out.
"Mmmmh, yeah, harder, harder!" She demanded, gyrating her own hips in time with Spitfire's to double their sensation. The captain immediately complied, slamming down in rhythmic motion, practically rocking the desk beneath them as she watched Lightning, their lust mirrored in each other's expressions.
Acid began to slosh around in the pit of Spitfire's stomach, her muscles, toned through years of elite flying, tightening in her flat abdomen, and the mare knew that the end was near. And, by the glazed, half-lidded, open-mouthed countenance the other mare wore, her end should have already long since come and gone. Perhaps Lightning Dust already knew a little more about control than Spitfire gave her credit for.
As her release drew nearer with every thrust of their sexes together, a truth became clear. Spitfire, while being many things including dominant, powerful, and slightly feared, was not a cruel pony. There was no need in forcing her cadet to hold on much longer. One thing was certain, however, that the end, like the end of every show the stuntmare had performed, was going to be a big finish.
She leaned close into Lightning Dust, frenzied, half-lidded, lust-driven eyes meeting one another. Lightning Dust's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Spitfire knew she had only a few more moment to make a point and a lesson that the other mare would never forget.
"Do you have what it takes?" She snarled.
No reply.
"Do you have what it takes?!"
No reply.
"Do you have what it takes to be a Wonderbolt?!"
"YES!"
Lightning cried aloud as she threw her head back once more, release washing over her like a tidal wave, electricity crackling through every nerve ending in an unforgivable boil of pleasure. Almost simultaneously, with no more reason to hold on, Spitfire bit down on Lightning's shoulder, a long moan dripping from her as she let go, heart beating like a chorus of drums in time with the contractions that, right now, her world was centered around.
Quiet fell over the two, save for their collective gasps and pants and occasional twitches as the last of their orgasms wracked their bodies. After a few moments of regaining a bit of coherence and conscious thought, the two mares lay side-by-side, and the notion of what had just transpired between them sunk in. Yet, with it, there didn't come a single regret.
Spitfire extended a worn-out hoof, feeling around sloppily on the edge of her desk, as though she were looking for the snooze button on an alarm clock. Finally she found what she sought, and weakly handed the object to Lightning Dust, who was still panting.
"Here," She said, passing over the silver badge. "Wing Pony."
Expecting to catch hell about the demotion from Lead and whether it had something to do with her 'performance' a few minutes before, Spitfire braced herself. To her surprise, nothing came. "Cool." Lightning exhaled. "We should--hah--do this again sometime."
During the time it took for bits and pieces of thought to come back to Lightning Dust, Spitfire had already stood and flung on her jacket and aviators. It was the athlete's stamina. She laughed, although this time, it was playful, friendly, but still firm. "No promises, cadet. Get yourself together, though, drills in ten."
She took a step, toppling slightly on wobbly knees.
"Maybe twenty."
*~*~*
Cool weather.
Good gracious Celestia it was nice.
At this altitude, it was not uncommon for the weather to change like a light, warm to cool from one day to the next. Spitfire, though, could not care less for the technicality of it, as long as it didn't leave her under sweltering heat for too many days on end.
However, this weather was good for far more than just keeping the team cool under the collar; the white cloud cover kept visibility clear, and the air was crisp enough to slice a knife through. A few days ago, it would have only been all the more easier to watch her team fail through the skies with this kind of weather, but today, with both of her lead fliers present and ready for duty, the captain was actually looking forward to watching the drills.
"Alright, newbies," She called, their cue to assemble. "Buddy up. Leads with Wings. You know how it goes." She nodded to them, as they began to shift around, pairing up.
While the other cadets found their partners, Rainbow Dash turned to Lightning Dust. "Guess you're my Wing Pony, then." She said casually, but the satisfied relish in her tone was still audible.
"Yeah, guess so." Lightning Dust moved to stand alongside her, flexing her wings in preparation for takeoff. "By the way, Rainbow Dash," She began.
The cyan mare turned, grinning. "What?"
Lightning Dust smiled genuinely. "I just want you to know, no hard feelings."
Rainbow's eyes widened, taken aback. She had expected a challenge, or trash talk, at the least. "Thanks, Lightning Dust."
"Yeah, no problem. I guess you could say we're even now."
She trotted forward, flexing her hooves as she walked. Rainbow Dash furrowed her brows. "I mean, you're Wing Pony," Lightning's grin turned to a smirk as she looked over her shoulder.
"...And I slept with Spitfire."