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.