Aerial View was a freewheeling Pegasus who loved to fly more than anything else, so the aerobatic stunt team, the Wonderbolts, seemed like the perfect way to for her to make a living. When she meets other great flyers, Aerial finally gains the motivation to work hard and climb the ladder to command. Then came an event that would change her life forever.
This is my entry for Scribblefest 2016. It occurs over 20 years before the start of First Gear so it can stand on its own or be read as a prequel. Depending on the response, I may write more stories about the generations preceding Gearhead later.
Chapters (7)
Sorry to see that this hasn't gotten any comments yet. Hopefully this'll help! I posted a review of this story — and 13 other entries in the Scribblefest competition — over at my blog.
Good luck in the competition!
7063229 My work doesn't seem to gather a lot of feedback, even when I have a large number of reads. If you have any ideas about how to spread the word about them, I would greatly appreciate it. I always post a link when I update my current story only Google+, and I have the stories themselves in a couple of groups here as well. I have asked for feedback before, but I guess most of my readers don't have much helpful hints to give me.
So thank you for the positive, if quick, review. You've probably noticed by now that I favour a longer style, however I tried my hand at teasing out details within the length limit given for this contest. It didn't quite work as initially desired, leading to my having to cut the initial scene where Aerial's flying around above Los Pegasus and she gets scouted by the twin captains. The word limit also led to the transition from Aerial and Windwalker's individual training to the squadron war game, which I thought would look cool if animated, since Aerial was pulling the same move through the transition itself. I tend to see this as more of a 'human' drama with some action and comedic elements in it.
Aerial, Windwalker, and many of the Wonderbolts trainees are mature characters in the main timeline, so I had fun working with them as maturing young adults here. I even decided to include Fast Clip and Whiplash, who assist Spitfire in 'Wonderbolts Academy.' At the same time, I had a couple drop-outs who would not be included in the Wonderbolts roster with which we are familiar. A lot of the training exercises I used here were things I prototyped in Third Gear during my version of that episode -- mostly the team-level exercises, which I thought were mysteriously missing from the episode, given how the Wonderbolts relies so heavily on teamwork.
I also had a summary version of this in there, however memories change as one ages, and so details will differ between this more complete version (I would like to flesh certain events out to tease out my characters more after the judging for the contest is done) and what amounts to flashes of memory recovered from Aerial by Gearhead, my series's main character. It turns out Aerial's memories differ on quite a few points.
My regular readers will have some familiarity with some of the characters and events, and will even be able to compare the pivotal event that happens here with the one the next generation faces, but I was careful in writing this short story in such a way that prior knowledge is completely unnecessary. New readers can enjoy this story without knowing my characters or the ways my version of the Ponyverse differs from canon, because I provide the necessary details. My regular readers may get a little more out of it.
But this is the reason I chose Aerial's story over a follow-up to What Friendship Might Be where Dusk and Dawn would help Gearhead convince his parents to let him leave the farm. I may still write that, but I think prior-generation preludes might be more interesting. I have enough to write concerning Gearhead as it is. My main series has evolved into something far more ambitious than the simple character insert fimfic it started out as.