//------------------------------// // Chapter three: Walk before you run, run before you fly // Story: "Dirt kickers" // by Setlef a.k.a Silent Charger //------------------------------// When I had first arrived in Ponyville I was more than a bit disappointed, I mean what interesting things were there to do here, it was a little farming town. Despite It’s seemingly humble and quaint feel, Ponyville had hosted more catastrophes, disasters, and malicious entities, than any other town in Equestria. What I got from this was along the lines of me getting the most work of any of the Nights and having the least amount of fun while doing it. I mean what in Tartarus was so interesting about freaking Ponyville, even the name is lazy and sort of meaningless. The most interesting thing that “should” be happening here was the Summer sun Celebration, something that is celebrated literally everywhere. And despite all of this, Last year the ponification of chaos and destruction just popped up out of nowhere and started literally turning the peaceful little town upside down. Being one of the seven Nights I could have been assigned to any one of the major cities in equestria. I could have enjoyed the skyscrapers of Manhattan, the hustle and bustle of Fillydelphia, or even the grandeur and regality of the royal city of Canterlot. But no, I got stuck in the one place that seemed to attract every evil entity in Equestria and could still get boring. Or at least that was how I had been thinking of things up until recently. Ponyville may at times be a troublesome place to live, but when things weren’t blowing up or being turned into parasprite food, it was actually a very nice place to settle down. There was a certain magic about Ponyville that made everything about interacting with the other ponies who live their just so amazing, especially in the context of friendships. I somehow felt much closer to the ponies I had only recently become acquainted with here in Ponyville than those that I spent years with at the Academy. For example, I would have never asked a favor as big as finding me a flying coach from the quarterbuck from my hoofball team, someone who I had interacted with nearly every day for four years. Yet when I met Applejack it took me about four seconds to truly believe that she would help me out if I was in trouble. I had known her for a day or two at the most and I had already trusted her enough to talk to her and the rest of her family about being a Night. Sometimes it was unsettling even to me how much I just instantly seemed to trust these ponies. But dammit if it didn’t just feel natural. As I began to approach Ponyville I realized for the first time that for all its simplicity, it was a really very nice place to live. It was a great place to raise a family, virtually no crime and with a great school system meant that foal’s would grow up safe and smart. While it was at time visited by the occasional evil monster these assaults on the otherwise peaceful Village were usually taken care of by the still unknown carriers of the Elements of Harmony. Generally things went from normal to crazy and then back again in less than a day or two; so everypony has either accepted it, gotten used to it, or both. Lost in thought I found myself bumping into a mare while wandering through the marketplace. She looked to be only a year or so younger than me, about the same age as AJ. “Oh, sorry about that ma’am,” I stuttered out finding it a bit hard to speak. She was small so running into her didn’t hurt, what had struck me was the mare herself. She was beautiful, but not in a glaring sense. She wasn’t sexy per say, just cute, almost too much so. Everything about her seemed fragile, from her slender form to her small tucked in wings. She was butter-yellow with pink hair that covered her face almost completely. I was so stunned by her sudden and beautiful appearance that I very nearly forgot to help her up. “Are you okay?” I asked as I stooped low to help her up off of the ground and back onto her hooves. “...” When the mare hadn’t answered I began to feel a little worried. ‘I am pretty big and she is pretty small, I hope I didn’t break her.’ I thought to myself ’I don’t even know how fast either of us were moving. She doesn't look injured but I can’t tell for sure. Maybe if I just...’ As I reached down to poke her (Celestia damn it man I’m a Night not a Doctor!) her eyes shot open and a uttered a short gasp of concern. “Oh my, I’m so very sorry sir I didn’t mean t-“ As she looked up at me she froze in the middle of the process of standing up. If it hasn’t become painfully apparent already, I am not a normal pony. I am big, dark, and have freaky bat wings. So I can understand how seeing me tower over you after being knocked to the ground could be... unsettling. Then, without warning she sprung into the air, gathered up her things and took off at a speed that I didn’t think possible for such a small mare. So I found myself standing in the middle of the marketplace, looking menacing as usual, after just knocking over and scaring off a young mare. I didn’t really know how to react to the situation and I was getting some weird looks from the other ponies in the market so I decided to move on. Walking through the town I realized that I had no idea where exactly Rainbow Dash’s house was. Because it was a cloud house, and it was so far off the ground, there was no way of telling where it was unless you were a weather pony and had the wind charts for the day. So I decided to head to the center of town where town hall was. It was the tallest building in Ponyville and you could see pretty much everything in and around the town from the top. “ Ugh, I am never going to-” *THUNK* Something slammed into my side at a breakneck pace. Something very... Pink. ‘Is it just me or am I meeting a lot of ponies this way recently?’ I thought to myself before turning to see if the pony that had collided with me was all right. “It’s just you.” The mare responded to my... wait what? As I turned to look at the apparently psychic mare was greeted with a small pink mare with three balloons for a cutie mark smiling wider than her bone structure should allow. Then several things happened at once; without warning she jumped up into the air, gasped, and released an irrational amount of confetti out of her hair before zooming past me. When I turned to look where she flew off to but she seemed to have completely disappeared. 'Well... that was strange.' I thought to myself before I continued my journey to the center of the town. *WHAM* “Ok this is getting to be worse than back when I played hoofball.” I said out loud to no one in particular. ‘I wonder what I must look like to the average onlooker?’ I thought to myself about how strange the day had been so far, ‘I mean, a big guy like me might accidentally knock someone over if he isn’t careful but so far I’m the one being run into.’ As I looked down to the newest pony to slam into my side I notice that she is somewhat of a returning customer. “So Rainbow...” I say looking down at her at she tried to quickly right herself, “Is this going to be like a regular thing with you and me, because if it is you may want to invest in a helmet.” “Oh, hey Silent,” she said wobbling from side to side still obviously dazed from the impact. “I was just about to head over to Sweet Apple Acres to come get you but I got... sidetracked.” “Oh really now?” I asked her raising an eyebrow. “So what new trick are you working on?” Her eyes lit up with the prospect of showing off her moves to someone new and she almost immediately shot up into the air... almost. Just before she launched into the air I was able to grab a hold of her tail and keep her grounded. “Hey! What the buck, Silent!” She yelled as she struggled to become airborne. “Dash, think about a few things first, we are in Ponyville, if you had crashed into anypony but me there is a really good chance that they could have been hurt.” I reasoned “How about before we go and fly off the handle (OH MY CELESTIA THE WORDPLAY) we find somewhere a bit safer to do it.” “Oh, yeah, that would probably be a good idea.” She said as a bit of color was added to her face. She then jumped up on my back and laid down saying “I’m going to take a quick power nap, wake me when we get there.” As I began to walk towards the field between the edge of town and the beginning of the Everfree Forest she quickly fell asleep. This certainly wasn’t something I was used to. Dash was extremely light so having to carry her really wasn’t that much of an issue, but this certainly wasn’t a normal thing to do either. It was weird because I knew she was there, I could feel her on my back, but I couldn't turn to look at her which was something I for some reason had the intense urge to do. She was so soft, and warm, and feeling how light she was it seemed like she should be a lot more fragile than she actually was. It was hard to believe that she could survive crashing into things like trees, the ground, and occasionally... me. I found myself getting unnecessarily nervous about what other ponies were possibly thinking about me. It had to look rather odd, seeing a huge, dark colored bat-winged pegasus carrying what I would call my exact opposite; a small, light blue mare with a rainbow mane and beautiful wings. It was definitely making me uncomfortable. It felt like years, though it was really less than an hour, had passed before I finally reached the field. I found a place that I thought might have been suitable for some flying, it was a nice open space with only one or two clouds in the sky. Knowing that we had arrived I tipped to my side a little bit and let Rainbow Dash slide off of my side. She hit the ground with a dull thud and for a second I was worried that I had been a bit careless, until I saw that she still sleeping like a foal on the ground. She was muttering sleepily and from what I gathered she was dreaming about some sort of training camp. I cracked a sly grin before standing upright next to her and recalled back to the Tartarus week the seniors on the hoofball team were in charge of putting the new recruits through. I breathed in deeply and with my best drill sergeant voice yelled at max volume: “AttenTION!” She immediately shot up into a standing position with one foreleg cocked forward in a hasty salute. “Rainbow Dash, Wonderbolt first class reporting for duty!” She yelled out reflexively before noticing where she was and how I was rolling in the grass laughing my flank off. “Shaddap Silent.” She said while grinning herself before stretching her wings and floating calmly up into the air with a few small flaps. “So are you going to show me this new trick of yours or what.” I asked her. To be honest I did it more because she looked like she wanted to show it to someone that out of my desire to see it. I didn’t have any problems with ponies doing tricks, in fact some of them were pretty fascinating, but their value was lost on to me. It was neat to see other ponies do cool things but knowing that you could never replicate those feats always made these experiences bittersweet. “Heck yeah!” She said rather enthusiastically before rocketing up into the sky at a blinding pace. Watching her fly was pretty amazing, everything she did seemed spontaneous in nature yet was executed with a perfection that could only be obtained from countless hours of practice. She began with a few vertical loops that steadily faded into horizontal ones. Then without warning she exited her loop tucking her wings to her sides and turning her body to execute a lazy sort of back-flip. Then, as gravity finally began to kick in she shot her wings out and was flung forward at a fantastic rate. From there she began to rapidly gain altitude, flying higher and higher into the cloudless skies. Just before I lost sight of her she turned one-hundred and eighty degrees and beamed back towards the ground, gaining more and more speed until suddenly- *FOOM* The air around her seemed to shatter before my very eyes, the visible light spectrum flew out behind her as she cracked forwards and flying parallel to the ground. Tucking herself into a ball she began a series of impossibly fast front-flips causing her motion blurred mane and tail to both fling outwards creating a pulsating vertical disk of beautiful colors. Eventually she began to slow down and the rainbow disk began to fade, after which she started to plummet to the ground. Worried at the strange patterns of her descent I began to sprint to where I thought she would land. But when she was only about ten feet off of the ground she made seemingly impossibly sharp ninety degree turn and began flying level to the ground again. I stood there dumbfounded at what I had just seen. I had seen some amazing things before then; I had seen the crystal birds migrate over Canterlot mountain at first sunrise, I had seen the ritualistic dance of a king dragon and his queen, I had met the princess’ and even had conversations with them. But nothing I had ever seen could have explained the beauty of Rainbow’s new “trick”. When she landed in front of me she began to look at me as though I had three heads. I quickly realized that I was still wearing my expression of absolute dumbfoundedness on my face. As I picked my jaw up off the ground Dash approached me cautiously and apprehensively. “Well,” she said in an uncharacteristically coy manner, “What did you think?” “That was... wow” I felt genuinely bad, I couldn’t even hope to put how amazing what I had just seen was. But for some reason RD seemed to take my silence as me trying not to hurt her feelings. “Dang, was It really that bad?” She asked me looking crestfallen. “NO!” I shouted, startling the cyan pegasus, “That was, the most spectacular thing I have ever seen. It was amaaaaaaaaaaazing.” I found myself with my face very close to her’s without realizing it. She blinked twice her face turned bright red. After a few seconds of awkward silence both of us lurched backwards and fell on our flanks. As suddenly as the awkwardness between us was brought about it vanished and we both began to laugh uncontrollably about the whole situation. About a minute or so later we both finally calmed down and remembered why we had arranged to meet up that day in the first place. “So big guy,” She said scanning me with the eyes of an expert trainer, “Show me what you got.” “Wait, just like that?” I asked, confused about the abruptness of how the lesson started. “Well yeah, if I want to teach you how to fly I need to know what I’m working with.” She said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Makes sense.” I said before unfurling my wings. My wings are strange, not only are they very large when compared those of a normal pegasus, but they are also not feathered wings but instead they are leathery like a bat's wings would be. Because of this, ponies used to have difficulty accepting my inability to fly, after all, bigger wings means more lift no matter how you slice it. The thing is, when compared to the rest of my body my wings are disproportionately small. Still, when I brought my wings out to full length it was quite the sight, or so I’ve been told. Dash looked relatively impressed and even a little bit hopeful when she said, “That’s quite the wingspan you got there Silent. Now let’s see how well they get you airborne from a standstill.” At this point my “flying ability” has degraded to a little less than extending my jumping ability. I hadn’t even tried to got off the ground without a running start for nearly two years. “Here goes nothing.” I said apprehensively and began to beat my wings up and down. My wings caught a lot of air and I was throwing wind all around me. The grass beneath me began to flatten and Dash’s hair was being blown back but I remained planted firmly on the ground. I flapped up and down harder and harder but no matter how powerful I made my strokes, no matter how much strength I put into it I could not get off of the ground. It began to get infuriating, I was a pegasus Celestia damn it, I was getting off of the ground if it was the last thing I did. I began to pound my wings up and down with all of my strength, viciously tearing through the air around me until finally my body gave out. I crumpled to the ground, defeated and ashamed. “Damn, Silent, you really have some crazy strength there,” Dash said in an extremely sympathetic tone, “I have no idea how you didn’t get off of the ground, how much do you weigh?” This was a bit awkward, last year I broke a slightly embarrassing record. I was at that time, the heaviest pegasus in Equestria, I even outweighed Celestia by about two hundred pounds. “Just above two thousand eight-hundred pounds.” I explained with a sheepish grin. Dash’s jaw hit the ground, literally, she was walking over to be when she asked me and tripped over when she heard me answer. “Wha-what?” She asked dumbfounded, Its not really that surprising to see her this shocked, after all Big Mac is about two thousand pounds and he is considered a giant. “You heard me,” I said with a grin, “starting to regret telling me you would help?” “But, that's impossible, I only weigh about four hundred...” she trailed off, looking at me in awe before realizing what she said and blushing. Who could blame her, no more likes to talk about their weight. “Anyway, I should have said this earlier but I generally have to get some sort of a running start before I take off.” I told her. This statement seemed to bring her back to reality. “Okay, lets try that then.” I brought myself to bear and began to run across the field as fast as I could, the feel of the wind in my face always seemed to calm me down, I guess that makes sense seeing as I was a pegasus and all. When I finally felt I was running fast enough I envisioned a cliff where I was going to jump, having an obstacle to get over often helped to motivate me whenever I try to fly. As I neared the edge of my imaginary cliff I launched myself upwards and outwards, flapping my wings as hard as I could. I could get pretty good distance but generally it was nothing too much more than gliding would have gotten me. As I landed hard onto the ground Dash zipped over to me looking excited. “What’s got you smiling Dashie?” I asked her as soon as she touched down. “Well, I’m not sure, but I think I can tell you what one of your problems is!” She said proudly. “Did you Know that feathered pegasi and leathered pegasi fly using totally different wing strokes?” “No, no I didn’t, in fact I don’t think anyone before now ever even bothered to tell me that there were different wing strokes.” “Let me guess, you were the only pony in your flight class that had bat wings?” “Yeah I was, why?” “Well the thing is, different wings use different wing strokes in order to fly properly, and because you were the only one with bat wings and you were a trotter, the flying instructor probably didn’t bother to go over the basics of flying for someone like you.” “Ok so I’m flying like I have feathers, it doesn't really seem like that change that much.” “It changes everything!” she cheered jumping into the air and doing a little spin. “When you flap your wings straight up and down like that you are flying like a feathered pegasus should fly, the shape of our wings allow us to catch the air on the downstroke and keep air from getting caught in a vertical upstroke. Your wing aren't like that at all, because of the lack of bone structure on the actual flaps of your wings, they don’t keep their shape as well as a feathered wing would. Because they don’t keep their shape they can catch just as much air coming up as they can going down. So in essence if you are flapping straight down then back up again your wings push you up then right back down!” She explains looking rather proud of herself. “Okay, so now that we know that, how do I fix it?” I ask excitedly, this could be the breakthrough I had been waiting for. For the first time in a long time flying seemed like a real possibility. “I have no idea...” She said with a frown. But her saddened expression lasted only a second or two before she excitedly exclaimed “But I know who would!” “Who is it? Are you sure they can help me? Do they have bat wings too?” I fire a salvo of questions at the poor cyan pony. “She doesn't have wings at all, she is a unicorn.” Dash replied with a grin. “Then how do you know she can help me?” I asked, skeptical that a unicorn could help me out with the mechanics involved in specialized wing movement. “She read a book on it. Trust me.” “Why would a unicorn read a book that explains how bat-winged pegasi fly?” I asked. Dash responded with a roll of her eyes, saying,“Twilight reads books on everything, I don’t think she really discriminates by what the topic is.”