Retirement
Admiral Biscuit
The day before his retirement, Whirlwind emptied his office, packing everything he felt like keeping in a duffel bag—the very same duffel bag he had been issued on his first day of boot camp. He took it back to his barracks, then he packed his few personal belongings inside.
The next morning at muster, he informed the Wonderbolts that Spitfire was to be his successor, thanked them all for their service, and gave her a sharp salute before he flew off, his duffel bag in tow.
After that, he faded completely from public view. A few enterprising newsponies tried to track him down, but they all failed. He gave no speeches, wrote no memoir, opened no flight training school: it was as if the sky had simply swallowed him up.
* * *
None of them had been clever enough to look in the right place.
The day of his retirement, Whirlwind had flown to Canterlot, and had spent the night at a hotel. There, he dyed his mane and tail. Like a good soldier, when he checked out, all traces that he'd ever occupied the room were gone. He boarded a train to Dodge Junction, and never looked back.
Once he got there, he bought a huge plot of land on the outside of town, and mail-ordered every book he could find about farming, then he sent a telegram and a money order to his marefriend. A week later, she and her foals joined him on his nascent farm.
From that point forth, he devoted every ounce of his being to his new family and farm. Never once did he mention his time in the Royal Guard, nor that he was once commander of the Wonderbolts; that detail was even glossed over in his obituary: Whirlwind spent ten years in the Royal Guard and twenty-five years in the Wonderbolts, retiring to pursue his lifelong dream of being a farmer.