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// Flight or Plight? (Rewrite) 
// Story: To Scratch A Fire 
// by Guardsmare Sade 
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	The cold wind of the early winter morning was gently passing through her fire orange and yellow mane and tail. The air was almost as cold as one of those world famous Super Double Chocolate Triple Scoop Twirl Sunday from Sugar Cube Corner. The skies were full of grey fluffy clouds floating in less than a uniform fassion, slowly and gently laying a light blanket of snow upon the homes of the still sleeping ponies below.

Perfect time for her cold weather endurance training Spitfire thought to herself as she looked out over the barely lit morning skies, Celestias' sun only just peeping over the top of the bordering mountains in the distance as it was gently and perhaps reluctently roused from its peaceful slumber. Lunas' moon still slightly visible on the opposite side of the sky quite ready to trade places with its sibling. 

Spitfire quite often took the chance to go out training in the waking moments of the morning when most other ponies were still wraped up snugly under thier blankets, pleasantly dreaming of warmer things. It was easier to avoid the fanfillies and colts while they still slept.

She stretched out her yellow wings, gently flapping them to remove any stiffness she might have had from sleep the previous night. Falling asleep on her couch had been a rather silly thing to do, but she was just too tired to even bother with moving all her wonderbolt paperwork from her bed where she had roughly stashed it, mere hours before dozing off to the sound of her television blairing more divel about some rumours and gossip about her or her team members again.

There was a slight tug on her left wing, as though somepony was trying to get her attention. she looked around to find the assailant, but no pony was there. When she outstretched her wings a second time, she felt the same tug. Deciding it was something she could figure out after her morning warm up rutine,  she prepared herself for her first cold weather endurance flight this new winter.

Straping her goggles to her head, she looked to the cloud she was standing on to examine the size of it. She judged that it was sufficient enough to give her a small running start, giving her better lift off, and a good kick start to her warm up.

She trotted as far back on the small-ish fluffy, snow filled cloud as she could without falling off the far edge. She pulled her standard issue blue lense gold strapped goggles down over her eyes to allow top flight speeds without the hastle of the cold frigid wind and snow drying  or damaging her eyes. Spitfire smiled at the thought of the freedom of flight and the amount of joy and excitment it allowed her.

With one last glance at where she was standing upon the cloud, she crouched down, gave a small smirk and then began running full speed to the end of the cloud, her wings flew open as she was reaching the middle of her fluffy launch pad, again granting her the phantom tug on her left wing. Choosing to ignore it for now as she had already pumped herself up for her flight, she continued to run toward the edge and lept into the wide ocean of blue freedom! 

Her wings snapped taunt as she used them to take advantage of the cold wintery air currents to lift herself higher and further from her starting platform. after a few moments of freefall gliding, she began to flap her wings to pick up the pace, first slowly, to allow her musscles to adjust to the climate, soon her wings per picking up more speed. The idea of letting loose was getting too hard to ignore, and before long, her caution flew to the wind, nearly as fast as herself. That moment of carelessness was all she needed.

With a grand flap of her unacustomed and still tense wings, she was off at great speeds, the reaction was instant, where once there was a wonderbolt captain, was now a pony shaped hole in a cloud that she had been nearing.  

Leaving a long thundering storm cloud trail behind her, the wind from her speed in front of her, and her caution nowhere to be seen, she pumped her wings for all they were worth! 

The force of her wings flapping at such speed caused a few clouds around her to shift possition and sprinkle thier snow somehwere else other than thier original destination. 

Spitfire was soaring though the winter skies with a little less than no dificulty. The blue and gold Wonderbolt Suit she wore, being made out of special silk, allowed her to cut through the air with the ease of a hot knife through ice-cream, plus the added bonus to it was that it also kept the heat in, allowing her to slowly aclimatize to the cold weather at her own pace, not when the winter decided that it was going to be in the negatives.

The speed she was currently flying at was astounding, even to herself. The freedom she felt at this moment, while soaring through the clouds of Equestria was her idea of pure bliss. The pride she felt for her wings and talents were unmatched in all of Canterlot, perhaps even the whole of Equestria. The wind on her face and the great mood she was in gave her the feeling that maybe, just maybe she could perhaps break her current speed record, make it even harder for her team members to surpass, not that it wasn't already impossible for them.

With a huge grin on her face, from ear to ear, she flapped her wings as fast as ponily possible. Her speed doubled in an instant, the effects became instant! 
The wind became colder and heavier as it whisked passed her face, cold and heavy enough that she began to even feel it through her special Wonderbolts uniform.

Without any form of warning, her left wing decided that it was time to suddenly cramp up, causing her surprise and pain!
The pegasus pony couldn't stop her wings flapping fast enough, each subsiquent push with them caused her wing to shoot lances of pain through itself, her body and her mind. Again and again her wing launched its attack untill she could stop it from flapping. at that moment, she realised her mistake and found herself tumbling toward a wide green and white landscape.

In her mad panic to stop her wings from flapping, she haden't realised that she had fallen below cloud level. 
Beginning to worry because there were no longer any clouds below her that she could try to land on she tried to start flying again, to gain altitude, or to slow herself down, anything that would at this moment, be more helpful that a full speed tumble dive to the ground.

The pain in her wing returned with a vengance each time she tried to pump it, instinctivly causing her to lock it into a less painful folded possition.
The landscape and what she could now make out, in her fright, as a small town was till hurtling toward her. She spread her wings out as far as she could to create as much surface area to fight the wind as possible, but only managing one.
Her left wing was still folded to her side, no ammount of force or life threatening despiration seemed to be changing that fact.

Quickly remembering an old codger of a teacher she had, and what he's said about free fall when she was still a student at flight school, she spread all of her limbs out trying to make herself as wide as possible and even took a deep breath to widen her frame even the smallest amount more, With enough surface area to resist the wind, the slower she would fall. With all four of her legs and only her right wing out she could actually feel herself slow down slightly, but not nearly as much as she needed

Hoping for a miracle or somepony to save her, she closed her eyes. A small smile crossed her face, "If I bite it now, atleast I did so doing what I loved. hurtling through the sky at great speeds! Even if it was down." Just as she was about to chuckle at something she would, at any other point in time, not find funny, she felt a sudden and violent thump on her stomach and a less than pleasant (But not unwelcome) stop.

With the air knocked out of her, her eyes snaped wide open in a panic, but before she could adjust to see anything more than pure blinding white. brown and a hint of green, a snapping noise filled the air, to which she followed with a new tumble of her own, Having had the mere moment to adjust that she needed, her eyes saw branches, rows and rows of blury branches below her, more than a few poised to catch her in a hard and wind knocking way.

With a yelp of pain, surprise, a hint of hopeful joy and a large amount of snapping brances, she fell from the (So far) life saving tree and into the large roof of someponies' house below.

A topple, a scream, a slam and a crash later, she landed on the floor of a second story room with a mixed pile of roof rubble, snow and dirty laundry. Amazed to still be alive with only a few bruses, scratches and maybe a broken rib or two from the tree, Spitfire just layed there with a stunned look on her face, the amount of pain she was in was dulled immensely by the adrenaline thundering through her whole body, screaming for her to 'do it again!'

With a cough, a groan and a little bit of a lot of effort, she Looked around her at the suroundings that she had pretty much demolished. to which she noticed, was someponys' bedroom, or at least a guest room.

Seeing a heater in one corner, busted by a collapsed roof support beam, and a bed with a pony shaped lump on it in the other, She surveyed the room some more. thinking that whoever the pony in the bed is, has got to be the heaviest sleeper in all of Equestria.
Seriously, who sleeps through another pony plummeting through their roof?! A small smile spread across Spitfires' face as she asked herself this, before she passed out right there in the pile of rubble, snow and quitethe possibly dirty clothes.