I Hate to See Myself In You
They say it used to be armor, back in the old days. It was steel, tempered with dragon's fire until even the strongest earth pony couldn't dent it, and then magically compressed until it was as light and as thin as a feather. They say it was spell-neutral, so no magical force short of Celestia herself could even scratch it. They painted it blue and yellow, the colors of the sky and the princess.
These days, the uniform isn't nearly as special. Oh, sure, it's a special-knit fabric, so unique there isn't even a name for it, but it's far from the unstoppable feather-alloys from the ancient days. A thousand years ago, the Wonderbolts were the cream of the crop, soldiers who could make dragons bow before them. A thousand years ago, there would be no mercy, no hesitation, and no skewed priorities.
A thousand years ago, it would have taken a lot more than Spitfire's hoof to tear this hole in my uniform.
I know what I am. Ponies have called me arrogant more than enough times for it to sink in. But that doesn't mean I'm vain. I didn't exactly go out of my way to admire myself and my fancy new uniform in every mirror at base. But now, standing here and staring at my pathetic reflection, I find myself wishing I had indulged a little more. I didn't have time to get used to the uniform, never got the chance to think of it as being me. And now, this is the reflection that will be burned into my mind. This is Lightning Dust, the Wonderbolt. The former Wonderbolt.
There's a hole. It used to be smaller, just the size of my badge, but it's grown now. I did a lot of really angry flying. There's more than a few bits of broken glass around my house right now. There are other scratches, of course, but I can only really see the hole. It almost looks like a target, as if a javelin is about to fly through the air and pierce my heart. Maybe that's the real reason they put the badges over our hearts; so that if they're ever torn off, the heart is exposed. Maybe it's some kind of symbolism left over from the days when it was armor, showing what a horrible soldier it makes me.
The goggles aren't here. Those, I put away in my nightstand. They were mine before the Wonderbolts took me on. And before they were mine, they belonged to Grandpa. I wanted a way to bring him with me. Now I'm afraid to even give them back to him, because then he'll know. He'll know that I didn't get to live my dream. He'll know I was thrown out, because I would never have quit. And then he'll ask how it happened, and I'll have to look up at him with teary eyes and shaking feathers and tell him...
"I don't know what I did wrong."
The sound of my own voice comes as a surprise. My throat's a little sore from all the crying, and just those few words feel like they're going to push me into a coughing fit. I manage to choke it back at the last minute, but that just leaves me right back where I started; staring down my shameful reflection.
I'm about to shatter the mirror into a million pieces, when there's a sudden popping in my ears. A subtle rise and dip in pressure, and a tiny crackle that non-pegasi would never pick up on. Somepony's knocking on my cloud door. Normally, I could go from here to the front door with a beat of my wings and a blink of anypony's eye, but instead I walk the whole way. The floor sinks with every hoof-fall, only to spring up seconds later. I haven't been home long enough to tread it all down into a single compact layer.
By the time I reach the door, the popping in my ears has grown to the levels where I might get a headache if I don't shut them up soon. I grit my teeth and shout through the walls, "WILL YOU STOP THAT?"
The knocking stops. I let out a small sigh of relief, then go to open the door. There's nopony there but the wind and a mailbox full of junk mail, and I explode. My wings crackle with lightning, and I accelerate so hard the wind becomes a wall for the briefest of instants. I dash over to the nearest small cloud, and give the sky around me my hardest glare. There's not even so much as a feather fluttering in the breeze.
"Rainbow Dash?" I have got to stop talking when there's nopony around. If it was her, then there's no point in asking because she's already gone. And if it's some stealth flyer, then those two words just amounted to a week's worth of blackmail. Not that I've got anything left to lose in terms of reputation...
I go back inside, but not before I scrape some of the softer stuff off my veranda and use it to pad the door. I'll have a migraine one way or another, but I'd prefer it not be from a ding-dong-ditcher. On balance, I'd much rather a hard cider as the source of a headache. With that in mind, I make my way to the kitchen.
"You're out of milk."
The voice sets me off like a match to a fuse. The only other voice that ever had the backbone to tell me 'no', the voice that would have made me wet the bed as a kid with the mere acknowledgement of my existence. My inspiration and destruction, Captain Spitfire.
I round the corner, and there she is. She's served herself a bowl of cereal, and true to her word, there's an empty milk carton a few feet away. She's just sitting there, seat pulled up like she owns the place, toying with the cereal flakes. If it weren't for the captain's jacket and all its badges, I might think she had moved in as my roommate.
"You get one chance," she says suddenly, gaze still firmly fixed on her spoon. "If you can tell me why I threw you out of the Wonderbolts, we'll take you back." Her spare wing lists down to tap against a saddlebag, and some instinctive part of me knows there's a fresh uniform in there. It's enough to make me want to rip off the sham I'm wearing, but I resist. That would not be professional.
"Ma'am." Her ears flick, and I can tell she expects more to follow. So do I, but nothing comes out. I only get one shot. It's a shot in the dark, wearing a blindfold, with a sling that pulls twenty yards to the left, and if I fail, then that's the end of the road. Somehow, the hope of a future is even more crushing than the feeling of shame and defeat.
I wrack my brain. I try to push past my anger and remember the actual words Spitfire told me. Right now, a quote is my best shot. "It's because all I did was push myself as hard as I could. I didn't think about which direction I was going in."
"Halfway point." The spoon dips back into the cereal, never having met her lips. "Now say it without quoting me like I'm a history book."
It takes me five minutes of humming and hahhing to realize I don't actually know what she meant when she said that. Rather than take my chances, I hang my head in surrender. She sighs, and the crushing vice of defeat clamps around my heart yet again.
"Let's try a different question. Have you ever heard of the Daedalan Spiral?" I nod, afraid to do or say anything else. There's the briefest hint of a smile on her face for a split second. "The greatest trick we never did. Every single Wonderbolt who could fly that day joined in. We soared higher and higher, and our spiral formed a kind of vacuum. All the air above us ended up beneath us, but our collective slipstream meant we could still breathe. In theory, the Daedalan Spiral could take a force of pegasi straight to the moon." She looks at me for the first time since she got here. "Why couldn't we pull it off?"
Another quote comes to mind, one from an interview Soarin gave shortly after the spiral fell flat. I run it through a few filters, trying to make it sound like my own thoughts. "Damage control."
"In a nutshell, yes. The stadium we had taken off from was being crushed under all the air we kept pushing down. There were hundreds of civilians directly underneath a concussive force that was turning wood into pulp. One of us suggested that if we just went faster, we'd get out of range and then we'd be safe. She said we could leave this one to security."
It was starting to sink in for me now. "Was she the only one who said that?"
"Yes." She pushes the bowl away, and gets off her chair. "Everyone else broke formation. Every. Single. Wonderbolt. They all passed up the opportunity to accomplish the impossible, and did the ordinary instead. They saved lives. There wasn't a single casualty that day."
"There might not have been casualties if you kept going." Yup. I can see where this is going.
"Yes, there was always that chance." I think she got her name from that glare. "But we didn't become the pride of the nation by risking hundreds of civilians on a roll of the dice. Crazy stunts aren't what earned me the looks in my fans' eyes."
She picks up the saddlebag and walks right past me. I don't stop her. I don't even turn to face her. I don't even move until I hear her again.
"Why did I throw you out?"
I answer with a question of my own. "The Wonderbolt who believed everypony would be safe... did she break formation? Did she save any lives?"
I swear I can hear her shaking her head. "She kept flying. She didn't even realize the others had gone. Some say she touched the sun, and it burned away every part of her that had tried to put the spiral before the ponies."
I don't dare look at her. I know if I look, I'll know. But with nothing but her words, she's more imposing than any silhouette on a poster. "I don't think I've touched the sun yet," I manage a whisper.
"Perhaps it's time you aimed for it."
I lose track of how long I wait before I turn around. I don't bother to try and count how many minutes pass before I approach the saddlebag. And the hours that pass before I open it may as well be an instant for how much happens.
I hope I'll have time to get used to the uniform. I really want to see it as being mine, as being me. Because this, this is the moment that will last forever in my mind. This is Lightning Dust, the Wonderbolt.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- 621Chopsuey · 7k words · 48 3 · 2.1k views
- Nickel Alloy · 2.3k words · 25 3 · 897 views
- TundraStanza · 1.6k words · 29 3 · 988 views
- scifipony · 3k words · 39 2 · 1.4k views
- Manaphy · 7.2k words · 43 2 · 1.7k views
- Emperor · 3.7k words · 30 2 · 1.4k views
- twilightsparkle3562 · 1.3k words · 47 2 · 2.4k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.112 seconds
Total duration
1,055 users online
1,856,439 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Spitfire needs a better image for her tag.
I love it whenever I see a fic that has one of my favorites (Spitfire) and another pony I strongly like (Lightning Dust) having a relationship like this. It's a nice breath of fresh air in a way. Furthermore, I love how you characterized Spitfire as a mentor of sorts, something that I'd love for the show to do. And as for Lightning Dust, I thought her character was handled well. She was heartbroken because her actions shattered her dream. But as Equestrian culture shows, she has the opportunity for a second chance.
Anyway, nicely done on the story. While it was a bit on the short side, I found it entertaining nonetheless.
Everyone deserves a second chance. Hell they let Starlight off the hook
Feels like it sort of misses the point of the myth of Icarus (I assume that's what you were alluding to with "Daedalan"). I'm also not entirely sure what lesson Spitfire's trying to teach. Is she suggesting that Lightning should keep on the way she's going and try to "touch the sun" by herself so that her ambition is burned out? That seems antithetical to the rest of the story, though. Or maybe I'm completely missing the point.
Could this have been longer? Sure, but what there was was pretty decent.
6853796
I believe the massage was that she should learn to care about others, as that's what the Wonderbolts are about, at their heart.
6854099 But Spitfire's suggesting that she aim for the sun, which was what the pony in the allegory did. That pony disregarded the well-being of others for her own ambition. If you ignore Spitfire's parting words, then the message makes sense, but why would Spitfire want Lightning to aim for the sun if she was trying to tell her to be more empathetic?
Lightning (ha) Edit: I should mention that apart from the weirdness I'm picking up from the metaphor, this is a pretty strong fic. Both characters have a remarkable amount of depth given the length of the piece. I normally leave my positive comments at the beginning of my posts, but I was so busy sorting my thoughts out that I forgot.
6854110
No reason you can't aim high, just don't prioritize it over others' wellbeing.
AWWW! Thanks for the gift milord! I will cherish it forever in every folder I have!Did you base this off the story of... um, it was something that I know was about flying too high and burning in the sun. It's an old tale but I thought it might have been it.
Now Lightning Dust. I like how you portrayed her and not the brightest but defiantly not the dumbest pony in the world Like many others tend to do. She not arrogant, but there is still pride there based off her attitude, or at least in my opinion. Love it!
If you ever have requests i'd be more than happy to do one for you!
6854224 I second that.
Okay, I'm confused. What was the point of the story that Spitfire told? What happened to that lone pegasus that didn't break formation? Personally, I thought the only reason Lightning Dust got thrown out was because Twilight and her friends, the Elements of Harmony, could have been harmed. Even though, it would have been their own fault or the fault of security at the academy.
6856207 That's been the big question for a lot of us. Really as a 'team' Rainbow should have shouldered some of the responsibility for what happened and even the other Elements of Harmony, that and there should be a designated no fly zone somewhere. I mean seriously? There is so much wrong with the Academy episode but it was still a good one.
Now Rainbow Falls I think explained a lot of the problems the Wonderbolts seem to have. Disjointed and they really seem to be a bunch of hypocrites. I mean really Spitfire and Fleetfot? They talk about team work in the Academy only to ditch Soarin after he got hurt and replaced him with Rainbow Dash for the glory? Sounds like Lightning to me. I may be wrong but that's what it sounds like to me.
Lightning needs her story resolved in the show. She really does. Along with Trixie (I love you Trixie Senpai!), and Starlight.
Too bad Pinkies Pinkie Sense didn't happen............. Damn it Overlord Hasbro.
6853215 Thanks!
6854110 Basically what Spectrumancer said.
6854827 Not based off the Icarus myth, but there is an allusion to it.
6856207 What is the title of this story? What is the title of this chapter? What image did I choose for the cover? Answer those questions, and you will know what happened to the pegasus who didn't break formation.
The point of the Daedalan Spiral story was to give LD some perspective on her mistake. Rewatch the episode, and you'll notice that Lightning didn't lift a hoof to save a single life. She only cared about being the best. The lone pegasus is remembered as being foolish and arrogant, while the other Wonderbolts who broke from the spiral are remembered as selfless heroes. Any Wonderbolts fan worth their salt is going to remember that story, and it's similar enough to Lightning's situation that she can see the parallels, whereas trying to directly explain it runs up against her anger and arrogance.
6862774 The Icarus myth that's the one!
Gosh I could not for the life of me remember what it was called.
I wrote to Frainkie2 that I thought this was hypocritical of the wonderbolts seeing how they treated one of their own after he injured himself and tried to get Rainbow Dash to team up with them just to win. I really hate the Wonderbolts only because of that. That and also the only one who doesn't have his head up his flank seems to be Soarin.
Oh Soarin you pie eating weirdo.
6863386 I tend to treat Rainbow Falls as either non-canon, changelings, or an overly elaborate test of RD's character.
6862774
The Way the Mirror Looks at Me.
I Hate to See Myself in You.
Spitfire getting ready to take Lightning Dust's pin and give her the boot.
That doesn't make any sense. Wouldn't that pegasus have gotten kicked off the team like Lightning Dust got kicked out of the academy? Provided that pegasus survived flying into the sun, which is what I thought did not happen.
6863805 The pegasus didn't actually fly into the sun. That part's exaggeration.
As for the firing, Wonderbolts policy changed over time.
To be honest, I knew the lone pegasus was Spitfire as soon as I read her story. Your clues were way too obvious (I don't know if that was intended or not).
Anyways, this was a great read. Good job!
6869511 Yes. It was meant to be obvious.
Hasn't stopped people from not getting it, though.
Glad you liked it!
6869546 With that revelation, here's a fourth option to what Rainbow Falls is: Spitfire's old personality shining through.
7120940 Ah, true!
Short, sweet, makes it's point and then goes home. I like it, and at the same time, I'm a little disappointed, mostly by the way Lighting Dust is characterized, but even then, it's fitting to the story you're trying to tell and it sells the story, even if it's cut a bit short.
Cut to the chase- I liked it, and I liked the idea that Spitfire started out as a hotshot buckup as well.
7314565 I think you meant to say you're a little disappointed. Thus far, you haven't been disappointing at all.
7314571
Aha, you are correct sir. My bad.
Short and powerful. It's works like this that inspire me to write. Great job!
Again, short and powerful.
Since you've kindly asked for thoughts, here goes nothing.
First, I love this image of Spitfire you've built off of. To me, her actions show that she does care and wants to help LD. And even Lightning is well done. Yet, there's something about this that... feels off. Mostly it's due to how I would be in LD's place. Personally, there would be a lot of anger initially. I really wouldn't be in the mood to deal with Spitfire right after I was given the boot. I understand that it's based in a world of almost extreme forgiveness, it still bothers me. I'm glad to see that amends were made and that LD did learn something. But as others have pointed out, it felt like the resolution came to quickly. But, those are all just personal biases.
Overall, good story
7600628 All your biases are valid, and they probably mirror what I'd say if I were the reader and someone else the author. I really appreciate your comprehensive and balanced feedback, and hope I can convince you to do the same for some other stuff I've got lying around. You've got a refreshingly large amount to say.
Ughhh, putting my own thoughts and feelings into words at 1:30 AM is either depressingly or hilariously difficult.
Let's use your words then, shall we? after all, you've had hours to come up with yours.
I don't think this has gotten enough credit. Sitting in place, being afraid to move a few feet for fear of what is there is an important detail, even if I can't explain properly why that is to me. When setting up the pacing for a story, you could take that one line and spread it out to thousands of words, pulling out every possible thought and fear that could go through Lightning Dusts' mind. Instead, I feel like it's worded in a way that i almost miss the meaning if I don't read it really slowly. I'm usually reading 300k + word stories so reading slow is difficult for me.
I honestly am not sure what was meant by this.
Option 1: You could just tell me
Option 2: I can list a bunch of guesses
Option 3: I read every single comment on this story, searching high and low for anyone that could have already tried to explain your deep and intricate thoughts.
7725897 Probably the easiest way to explain it that doesn't involve you having to scroll down would be for you to guess, and for me to explain how you're wrong.
7725912 Alrighty then!
If touching the sun represents burning away the words parts of yourself. I would see this as an invitation for Lightning Dust to better herself. Even though the act of flying towards the sun was the problem that put the spectators in jeopardy, attempting a dangerous move, I think "Perhaps it's time you aimed for it" still means that she should improve her character, instead of heading for a destination without thinking of the risk to others.
Also, I assumed, because of the title of the story and chapter, that the pony being referred to was Spitfire herself.
7725929 Correct on both counts on the first try. You're more clever than you think.
7725930 It's the sleep deprivation, 6 hours from now I will most likely lose all semblance of intelligence just in time to stumble into my morning engineering class.
Congratulations! I would rather read your words than pay attention in Engineering!
Or statistics!
7725937 Well, good luck with that.
tse1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=OIP.M443e5b16063077bb922a6804729a2c4fo0&w=300&h=287&c=0&pid=1.9&rs=0&p=0&r=0
I'm severely confused. Did Lightning Dust blow her second chance here or get it? Because I can't tell.
7863174 The second one. Don't feel bad for not getting it, though, this definitely isn't my best.
7863178 Dang. Wasn't expecting a response that fast. So she did get her second chance? Good, because she needs one in the actual show, too. Or at the very least, a redemption episode.
I like the concept, but the last half of the story is a bit unclear in its construction.
I think there’s a grammar mistake.
The first question i would have asked is “why are you in my house?”
Hahhing?
Also, the last half was confusing.
Honestly i am all for second chanceing lightning
She could use someone