The snow was nothing to Spitfire. Sure, they had to cancel Wonderbolts practice in winter; health and safety gone mad, and all that. Canterlot bureaucrats were sticklers for anything that could lead to attempted suing, even when faced with pegasi who cheerfully risked their necks every Tuesday. But she knew this was a distinctly modern outlook, and so she reluctantly stole her chance and flew through the blizzard to the emerging shadows of Manehattan.
Here, the war against pencil-pushers meant very little. Hardly anyone went out in a storm like this. Even those who had to brave the streaming snowflakes and biting winds kept their heads down and hurried past as determined ghosts looking for better places to haunt. Towers loomed overhead, phantom cliffs standing coldly against the omnipresent grey.
Spitfire circled down vulture-like, flapped hard as a hummingbird, and then landed with wings splayed in the manner of a wary albatross. Every style, she’d plucked from a century or decade of Wonderbolt history. She even folded her wings slowly, as per Major Aero Veil’s circulation technique. No point rushing the muscles: she’d only get cramp under this biting chill.
She adjusted her saddlebags.
Only then did she force her way through the double doors.
Inside, the apartment stank. To any other nose, the damp stench was so rotten that they could feel their nasal hairs sizzle on contact. But Spitfire remembered the words drilled into her from Day One at the Academy: “Don’t cry over a sprained wing. Save up the anger, save up the tears, do the job in front of you, and if you absolutely must, then let it out later. Afterwards. Never buckle while you work.”
Grimly, she nodded to the mare behind the reception desk. Who nodded back: no point wasting words.
Of course, she took the stairs on foot. It was the sort of pointless self-imposed challenge that she’d chide in anyone else. Especially Soarin’, who laughed and only did it to mess with her. Wonderbolts might show off their tricks in midair with inches to spare, but that was honed to perfection. Random exercises were just pointless and unprofessional.
She walked twenty six floors up. Every step of the way, she suppressed her heavy breathing.
After all… a Captain of the Wonderbolts… who could also do that… If they pulled it off, well, that proved something.
Now she stood at the beginning of a corridor. The air was dead. Plaster lay in pieces along the carpet. Patches of brown infected the walls. Lights overhead were either cracked or smashed to jagged glass. No one could live in such a dump. They merely waited for life to stop kicking them to death.
In the distance: muffled shouting.
For a moment, a younger Spitfire took over and turned her round to the stairs and the nearby window glowing over them. Someone should know about a dispute –
The older Spitfire turned her back again. Waste of time in this place. Tell a Manehattanite that there was a dispute on Floor 26, and they’d just say, “You did check your map before coming here, right?” Or more likely, “Buzz off,” “Sorry, buddy, I haven’t got any change,” and “Look, I don’t care a fig about whatever it is you’re peddling; I’m not buying a darn thing, got it?”
Strictly speaking, not all of Manehattan was like that. But you got one or two neighbourhoods, and they were as bad as rotten apples in a bushel.
Spitfire stopped at one door. Her jaw tightened. By now, she should’ve been used to it, but every time, without fail, her jaw tightened.
She hit the door hard.
“Guess who,” she said through her tightening teeth.
Hooves shuffled up to the door. Chains and bolts clicked out of place. A key rattled in the lock.
One suspicious eye poked out of the crack.
The stallion behind it swung the rest of the door aside. “Captain Spitfire,” he said curtly.
He was wearing a mouldy old dressing gown, a Canterlot-level bit of padded plushness, now sadly faded with age. His chin was a swelling full of encroaching stubble.
“Wind Rider.” She barely gave a nod.
“Ex-Captain Wind Rider,” he snapped.
Don’t rise to it. Blood boiling, Spitfire marched inside. It was textbook, each leg swinging before each hoof planted itself firmly on terra firma. All it got out of him was a grunt.
What caught her eye at once was the display. Along one wall, the photos – some in faded black-and-white, some in the latest and glossiest colours – competed with the newspaper cuttings, trophies, framed autographs, and medals on stands. Every single time, she marvelled at how genuine those smiles looked.
On the table between her and that display, the plate was half-empty.
“Spearwort Snacks,” explained Wind Rider, surging past her. “Not a patch on Cinnamon Chai’s Tea and Cake Shop, but you get what you can around here.”
While he eased himself onto the chair again, she said, standing stiffly, “Been busy?”
Irritatingly, he chewed his carrot cake for a while as though she hadn’t spoken. Wrinkled, greying on top, and stooped so far forwards that his spine seemed to have a kink in it: there was no way the Wind Rider of her youth would have put up with that kind of slovenliness. Not without making snide comments: he was too cool and precise to bawl someone out, and a zinger from Wind Rider was more bed-wettingly terrifying than any number of insane drill sergeant shrieks.
After he’d swallowed the last bite, he said, without looking up, “Mostly keeping up with the sports. Blizzard Buckball at the moment. The Titanic Trio got their croups handed to them again. Their manager needs a kick up the backside. Never seen a team waste so much potential.”
Don’t rise to it. Don’t rise to it under any circumstances.
“You?” he said. Again, so smooth and precise: it was impossible to believe that polished voice came out of that hairy, crumb-flecked mouth.
“Nothing you haven’t heard about already,” she said. Still, she stood to attention and refused to relax. Part of her – a very unprofessional part of her – hoped he’d noticed, and hoped like blazes he was in torment behind those lazy, insulting eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. “I read about it all in the papers.”
“To be fair, we dealt with it pretty quickly.”
“Sure, kid. Sure.”
Spitfire took a surreptitious breath; there was no way he’d hear it. “Mom sends her… regards.”
Not so much as a twitch betrayed him. “Thought she might. Stormy Flare was a very… regarding pony, if I remember correctly.”
“Keep in touch with the old gang?”
“No. Most of them are either dead or stuck in care homes.” He pushed his plate away. “How’s the new gang holding up?”
“Fine.” Spitfire shuffled where she stood. Small talk always made her restless.
“‘Fine’? Old Stormy would have rattled off half a dozen names by now. Nothing interesting to report?”
“You’ve seen it in the papers,” insisted Spitfire to a point several inches over Wind Rider’s head. “And the new gang are fine.”
“Fleetfoot?”
“Fine.”
“Surprise?”
“Fine.”
“Fire Streak?”
“Left.”
“Really? So what’s he up to these –?”
“He’s fine.”
“Ah. I see. So it’s gonna be like that, is it?”
Spitfire could smell the resentment rising off him. Tangy, sharp, and filling her mind with an alarming redness.
“Can you at least tell me about Blaze and Misty Fly? Last I heard, they’d started –”
“Take a wild guess.”
“Right.” Lips smacked. “How about your stallion, what’s-his-name? Soary?”
Spitfire’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not my stallion.”
If only Wind Rider had argued. If only he’d opened his mouth and dug a knife into her thoughts. She could do with blowing up at someone who deserved it…
Instead, using that oily voice of his far more effectively than anyone else could’ve used a shout or a smirk, he said, “If you say so.”
The way he said that…
“Hardly unprofessional,” he grunted, rising arthritically from his chair, “to show a little tender emotion amongst yourselves, you know.”
“With all due respect, Ex-Captain,” she said, and she cursed herself even as she blurted out more, “sometimes it pays to keep your distance and not talk like two giggly schoolfillies swapping secrets. We’re here to do a job, not make friends. Someone taught me that once, long ago. I don’t forget.”
As though she hadn’t spoken, he made for a nearby doorway and disappeared inside. Cloth rustled behind the hole-splattered wood.
“Neither do I,” said his muffled voice.
She ploughed onwards. “Believe me, I wouldn’t even be here if I had my way. Do me a favour at least; don’t come the ‘fellow Wonderbolt’ act with me. You know what you did.”
When Wind Rider emerged, his bomber jacket swelled his chest and his white scarf trailed as a pure banner behind him. Only the sunken eyes and frayed grey mane ruined the effect. Pride of the Wonderbolts, he wasn’t. Even ignoring his more recent history…
“All right,” he said. “Usual place, I take it. Since your time is so precious to you.”
Tight-lipped, Spitfire nodded once. She still refused to make eye-contact with him, but a trained Wonderbolt learned early on to suck up the subtle details, even out of the corner of the eye. Wind Rider’s stoop wasn’t just weariness; when he moved, his spine had a characteristic stiff kink as though someone had replaced it with a bent spring. Not entirely voluntary.
“I am a Wonderbolt,” she said coolly. “Time is always precious to me.”
“I was a Wonderbolt.” He shuffled past her towards the door. “Time is even more precious to me now.”
Years ago, Spitfire had chosen the place. A diner. “Casual” was the order of the day; simple square seats between simple square tables next to simple square windows and providing simple square meals. Whoever had designed it had aimed for “modernity”, missed, and hit “utilitarianism” instead. The place reminded her of the mess hall at the academy.
Except for new details every time she visited: this time, the walls were crammed with old-timey photos of faces she recognized and even more faces she didn’t. Waiters and waitresses balanced towers of trays and chatted amiably to old ponies and worn-down donkeys who were regular enough to smile easily back.
Their own favourite table was proudly waiting for them in the middle of the diner. Neither of them liked corners or margins. That was one of the few things they could agree upon.
“Orange juice,” said Spitfire to the waitress.
“Come on,” said Wind Rider, his half-lidded eyes agleam. “You don’t have to be on-duty all the time. Make it two shakes topped with everything.”
He tried a wink at the waitress. She flicked a little smile at him and then scurried away.
“Isn’t this nice?” he said smoothly. “Just like old times, isn’t it?”
“The boat’s sailed on that one, I’m afraid,” said Spitfire.
Even his sigh sounded rehearsed, though rehearsed to a peak of thespian perfection. “Spitfire, we don’t have to be enemies over every little thing. Whatever happens, I have nothing but fond memories of my time in the Wonderbolts.”
Wishing time would go faster, Spitfire shuffled on her squeaky seat. “It’s too late for that, Wind Rider. You threw the dice. You took the gamble. No one forced you to do it, and they sure as sugar didn’t ask you to put someone else’s career on the line. I’ve got no sympathy whatsoever for you.”
Disarmingly – or so he probably thought – Wind Rider sighed. “You used to love listening to my stories.”
“I also used to believe the world would crack if anyone broke the sound barrier. I believed a lot of things.”
“Did I ever tell you the one about the Mustangia Machinations?”
“Wind Rider –”
“Face facts. You’re stuck here with me. Might as well get something out of it, instead of sulking like a baby.”
Spitfire swallowed the bile rising up her throat. Act professional. Be the Captain of the Wonderbolts. Don’t let him get to you, even if it was him who put those ideals into your head to begin with…
She realized she was slouching on her seat, and pushed herself back up. “No,” she said, ears cocked. “I never heard that one.”
“Not surprising. It wasn’t quite the glory-fest of the Griffon Campaign, or even anything particularly weird like the Flying Clown-Jester Wars. That Mustangia Regiment was just a bunch of upstarts with delusions of grandeur. Old Bluster took out their ace flyers all by himself. Then again, he always was a devil in a scrap. Never picked a friendly wrestle with him, because sooner or later he’d forget himself, and I’d rather he didn’t demonstrate his best street moves directly on my face.”
“Never met him,” said Spitfire, and was surprised by her own sadness seeping in. Of course, she’d come across the name, “Lieutenant Bluster”, somewhere among the others in her revision book, but that was just to pass the time. Anyone who was a serious fan had to know all the names.
She’d dreamed of meeting the old-timers, even when she’d gotten into the academy. Only to wake up the next morning and find they’d mostly retired.
Forelimb cracking like a whip, Wind Rider pointed at a seemingly random grin framed on the wall. “That’s him, as it happens. Actually, they’ve got most of the old gang up there. See the pudgy-faced mare on the left, third from the top? Carefree Cumulus, we called her.”
“The Corporal Cumulus?” Inwardly, Spitfire cursed herself. She was supposed to be seething with rage, but the name dived deep into her memory. She’d had sixteen collector trading cards just for Corporal Cumulus…
“Obviously not her at her best,” said Wind Rider. “Couldn’t keep her from the sweet stuff. She always laughed and said she was going to crash and burn anyway, so she might as well eat, drink, and be merry first.”
Spitfire said nothing. Cold recollections told her; she’d seen the headlines several months ago. “Crash and burn” had never happened to Cumulus, not when the snacks had finally caught up with her and the hospital had done all they could.
Another name for the history books.
“Soarin’s the same,” she murmured. “Can’t keep him away from an apple pie.”
Unexpectedly, the waitress cast a shadow over the table and two drinks came down with a plonk. Spitfire blinked, and remembered who she was talking to.
Silent sucking followed. The straws had to fight through layers of ice cream, syrup, cookie chunks, cherry, and sprinkles to reach, somewhere near the bottom, the milkshake layer. Rich ooze scolded her tongue with icy reproach. She was supposed to be watching her diet.
Opposite, Wind Rider gasped. “Couldn’t have done this years ago. If Captain Wind Shear could see me now, he’d have a seizure. Much more liberal nowadays.”
Spitfire hummed without any real commitment.
Truth be told, she’d suspected as much herself. Things were getting far too lenient in the Wonderbolts. Getting chummy with the newbies, leaving academy applicants unsupervised, treating fans like cool friends… Why, her old coach would have given her an earful if he could see what she’d done to the team.
Or not.
He was sitting right in front of her, after all.
She had to remember. Somehow, the Wind Rider who’d bellowed about Academy Records and nodded graciously at her demonstrations… was the same Wind Rider who sat before her right now, bones creaking, eyes sunken under the weight of too many sights, no longer the sort of pony who’d get a mention in Dream Stallions magazine: not that she’d ever read it. Well, for long. She’d grown out of that sort of stuff early on…
Dimly, she realized he’d said something. “Sorry? Was miles away.”
“Yes,” he said, indicating solely through his tone his opinion on captains who let their minds wander that far. “Well, be grateful you’re not ‘Just-gimme-a-sec’ Jetstreaker. The only reason we were stuck in Mustangia so long was because he lost the map and trusted what was left of his memory. Ended up twenty miles away from the target site, on the coast, asking awkward questions about his compass. How he ended up as navigator, I’ll never know. Someone must have liked him up top.”
They sucked at their milkshakes, Spitfire more loudly than was strictly necessary. For all she knew, she was probably the first of the new gang to learn anything about the Mustangia Machinations. Compared with the other campaigns from the Golden Age of the Wonderbolts, it must have been just a petty skirmish. No one even knew Mustangia had an air force –
Growling, Spitfire folded her forelimbs tightly across her chest. What’s your problem!? He’s a fraud! Stop listening to him!
“Still, better him than that piece of drek, Droughtseeker. You couldn’t laugh when he was around. Had a heck of a tongue in his head, not that it did him any good. Miserable old turncoat tried to take credit for anything the team did. He’d have said he invented flying, if he thought he’d get away with it.”
Spitfire breathed a sigh of relief. Thank you.
“I don’t think you’re in a position,” she said, “to cast stones there, Wind Rider.”
“Don’t you, now?” Yet lurking under the smooth tones: the faint rumble of fires deep underground. “Of course, he was nothing but a lying dog. What did he care about the Wonderbolts? They couldn’t kick him out fast enough.”
“Yes, if only he’d tried to frame someone else for a crime they didn’t commit. That would have been A-OK, right?”
To his credit, he didn’t rise to the bait. This time.
Then he glared at his milkshake. “So how’s your stallion – I mean, Soarin’ – taking care of himself?”
Oh no! He wasn’t wriggling out of it that easily! Both hooves hit the table with a rattle of cutlery. Spitfire’s chair scraped back.
“You could have cost her everything!” she snapped. “Where do you get the nerve to act like it’s no big deal!? She was one of your biggest fans!”
In that infuriating, strangle-worthy calm, Wind Rider shrugged. “What am I going to say that you haven’t heard a hundred times?”
“You could say ‘sorry’. It won’t kill you.”
“For what? I did what I had to do.”
“Like Tartarus you did what you had to do! You could have taken it like a grown pony!”
“Ah, you’re too young to understand.” And as though nothing had happened, Wind Rider sucked at his straw.
She almost, almost came close to smacking his drink off the table. Eyes pinned her down from all sides. There was a trickle from the bar, where one of the barmaids had completely failed to notice the poured tea overflowing one of the cups.
Buried under all the anger, Spitfire compacted her mind and hardened herself. This wasn’t how a professional behaved. Even angry shouting had to be done at the right place at the right time, i.e. during a training exercise to a bunch of wide-eyed hopefuls. Blowing up in a diner like some silly drama queen…
Slowly, she lowered herself onto the seat. The background chatter resumed.
“For what it’s worth,” said Wind Rider, pushing his empty glass away, “I have nothing but respect for Rainbow Dash’s skill. What I did was nothing personal.”
It was to her!
Whoa. Calm down, Spitfire. You’re talking about a newbie, when all’s said and done. You’re not the bestest best friends, or anything corny like that. Stop getting so worked up about it.
Finally, Wind Rider signalled to a passing waiter and got a bill for his trouble. She never paid. There were some lengths she wasn’t prepared to go to. Not anymore.
Coins tinkled on the offered tray. “Now we’ve had our refreshment, how about a little walk? Might cool you down under this snowstorm. The pegasi sure outdid themselves this time.”
In some ways, the snow helped.
Outside, they’d lost the hustle and bustle of a true Manehattan diner: boisterous voices, merry warmth, tantalizing smell of spices and roasted vegetables. Whereas here, the colours were drained. Spitfire squinted through the flurry, unimpressed by the oversized flakes of the city pegasi. They’d never get away with such shoddy craftwork in Cloudsdale.
Yet otherwise, she was even more comfortable on the path than she’d ever been on her seat, sipping milkshakes she hadn’t approved. The weather bit her over and over, daring her to toughen up. She knew how to handle that. She’d known ever since she were a filly, who liked wandering off and ignoring her mother’s warnings and calls.
With it came the fires of a newfound confidence.
“Did I ever tell you,” said Wind Rider, striding along with the casual insouciance of a greying lion, “about the Wyvern Incident in Tall Tale? Yeah, yeah, that’s right; that was one of your favourites. You must remember Big Blundergust. I tell you, he couldn’t fight for Princess or Equestria, but even their strongest fortress walls didn’t last ten minutes once he’d built up speed for that charge of his. Good stallion for a bar crawl too. Always remembered his round, good lad.”
Spitfire waited a few seconds in case he’d finished. At least she’d let him tell some of the story again. For a moment, she could almost forget what she was about to do.
“So there’s nothing,” she said casually as they turned a corner, “you regret about the way you treated Rainbow Dash?”
Wind Rider groaned, and it was exactly the groan she wanted to hear. It was the groan of a stallion who’d put up with this idiocy a hundred times before, and was resigned to putting up with it a hundred times again.
“Anyone who wants to keep a record in the Wonderbolt business has to be prepared for anything,” he recited impatiently.
And now the suspicions reassured her. Ponies in the team had been dishonourably discharged over the years. Private Lance: accused of tampering with the Dizzitron machine at the academy. Private Nebulous: accused of slipping sleeping pills into the water supply. Sergeant Firecracker: accused of stealing money from the team’s charity drive. Even Captain Proud Feathers: accused of rigging one of the Best Young Flyers Competitions in order to win a bet on Number Sixteen.
Nothing had been proven, and no one had gotten Wind Rider to talk. Not even her.
Immaterial by now. Since everyone knew about the Rainbow Dash case, lots of fans and media pundits had come to their own conclusions. Nonetheless, Wind Rider would not talk.
They followed the avenue onwards, lost amid a maze of faded skyscrapers. Wind Rider’s teeth chattered. Occasionally, a taxicab rushed past, and the frantic clopping of hooves would startle him into snorting and looking up hurriedly. Almost as though he were expecting, at any moment, the Chariot of Death.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “What do you care, anyway?”
“Rainbow’s a fine Wonderbolt,” said Spitfire. “We have codes of honour, even if you don’t.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yep,” said Spitfire with complete honesty. What else was he expecting?
“Codes of honour,” he muttered. “Meaning you handicap yourselves.”
“You know, we had a recruit like you some time back. Cocky, pushy, willing to do anything and everything to get in.” Spitfire kept her tone level. “She didn’t last very long.”
“Bet you admired her, though. I’ll bet everything I have left she was the apple of your eye.”
Were she a lesser mare, Spitfire would have sighed and hung her head in shame. But then, he’d known her since the first day, when she’d excitedly pushed her way to the front of the class and thrust her Flight Camp diary at his face. He’d signed it as easily as though he were an uncle granting a favour.
The point being: he knew. And she knew that he knew. And his tone, when he next spoke, was smug with it.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Don’t think I didn’t have eyes and ears to the air, even back then, even when I’d happily retired. You were the spitting image of old Windy, weren’t you?”
Windy. That’s what she used to call him.
Not her own invention. After he’d toured Cloudsdale for the umpteenth time, and signed whatever she’d thrust at him for the umpteenth time as though, every single time, it were the first time, he’d asked her to. She’d go a long way, he’d said, with the talent she had.
Over a fresh howl of snowflakes, she heard him spit. “You’ve gone soft, Spitfire. The whole team has. Back in my day, we got up to all sorts of skulduggery. It wasn’t a crime. It was just part of the game.”
“Being a Wonderbolt isn’t a game,” she said without thinking.
“Being a Wonderbolt,” he said through teeth too cold to part and too angry to chatter, “is about surviving. You think you’d have lasted five minutes if you’d been one of the old gang? In real life, the world doesn’t have codes of honour. Those griffons I fought wouldn’t have asked me if I was flying straight or crooked. You knock them out, or they knock you out. So don’t tell me what’s a game and what’s not, do you hear me?”
“I’ve told you before,” snapped Spitfire. “There’s no point being the best if you have to cheat your way to the top. I don’t need to tell you that. You know. Why else did you have to keep it a secret all this time?”
Wind Rider growled over the howling winds. “I taught you everything I know, Spitfire. There is nothing you can lecture me about.”
Despite herself, she relished his anger. Wind Rider was supposed to be unflappable; rumour had got about the academy that he’d never, ever lost his temper, not even when the legendarily bad “Upside” Downpour had caused that massive pile-up and smashed the main lecture hall. Any victory over that was welcome to her. He didn’t deserve his dignity.
And yet… when she glanced sidelong at his pronounced wrinkles and snow-capped mane sagging over his eyes, she felt a twinge of uncertainty. Whatever else he was, he was an old fossil, on his way to becoming stiff and cold again. Right now, even his strides were stiff-legged against the cold.
“Are you OK?” she said. Just in case it helped, she added, “Captain?”
“I’m fine! It’s just… brisk!”
“We could head back to the apartment –”
“I said I’m fine!”
Thus, they walked down the next block in utter silence, their eyes no longer stung by the snow. Along the pavement, white streams showed where the dry flakes were crumbling into powder. Drifts piled up along the gutters. Abandoned carts were already half-buried. She wondered if Manehattan weather ponies had to make up for missed days too; they did that all the time in Cloudsdale.
Whatever else happened, she stayed alongside him. Every fibre of her being recoiled at his barely hidden spluttering. A mere year ago, he’d have strolled as happily as she was right now.
At times like this, it wasn’t hard to imagine what was going through his mind. For all their successes, the old gang had been but a punctuation mark in the larger history of the Wonderbolts. Some generations had their standouts, like Admiral Fairweather and General Flash. Some simply didn’t. Not because they lacked skill, but because they’d simply been unlucky. There was no point in beating the all-time dive-speed record, for instance, a hundred years after someone else had cracked it.
Only Wind Rider had scraped anything resembling a success from their thirty years of service, against hundreds of years of far more impressive successes. It had been his only defiant statement to the universe before he’d retired.
But perhaps back then, the signs had been obvious? He’d taken days off work whenever an old colleague had suffered a crash or fallen from the skies unexpectedly. He’d talked occasionally – and seemingly at random – about the glory days, during lectures and training exercises. On that night when he’d briefly come back and attended the Canterlot get-together, leaving a stunned Rainbow Dash to pick her jaw off the floor, he’d ever-so-casually asked after some old names that hardly anyone had heard of.
Except Spitfire. She’d memorized them all.
No one else had really noticed, much less cared. To them, Wind Rider was the terror of the training grounds. Whole careers lived or died on his word. They’d nicknamed him “Dreamcrusher”. Somehow in all that, there was no room for a nostalgic old has-been.
Part of her wondered, even now, if she’d memorized his gang’s names simply out of fannish devotion, or if she’d somehow sensed something more.
“You were our hero once,” said Spitfire gruffly. She didn’t like thinking in silence. Against the grey shadows looming overhead, she felt like a filly again, lost in Cloudsdale at dusk.
“Not anymore,” muttered Wind Rider. “I’m not a hero now, am I? Never mind the years of service: you send one fake letter –”
“You did a lot more than send one fake letter.”
Pretending to be my mother. Copying her mouthwriting. Inviting her to the tryouts while I was off on some foal’s errand. You moved her like a pawn on a chessboard.
My own mother.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he said, regaining his old smoothness. “If I’d had any choice in the matter, Stormy Flare – your mother – wouldn’t have gotten involved at all.”
After gaping and shutting her mouth with the shockwaves of his words, she finally managed to say, “You think that’s what you did wrong? Not the part where you made it look like Rainbow had tricked me into leaving the show?”
“What’s the point in talking to you? Obviously, you and all of Equestria have made your minds up about me by now. Clearly, we’re stuck in a stalemate.”
“If you’d at least apologize for your breach of conduct –”
Wind Rider’s snort cut the conversation down. “Forget the promise! We’re going back to the apartment. Now!”
“Gladly! I don’t know why I bother coming anymore!”
Against the constant screaming of the blizzard cutting into their skins, the two of them about-turned and marched back the way they’d come. Fury burned through Spitfire’s veins. Beside her, she had no idea what drove Wind Rider to match her speed. She was more than happy to keep it that way.
More than happy.
But they’d only been words. She knew perfectly well why she bothered coming anymore. There was the promise. A chain: however much she struggled and flapped and tried to escape the gravity of the promise, she knew she’d never get far in the end.
Regardless, the sooner she got the stink of Wind Rider out of her system, the better.
“I don’t know if it’s lucky or pitiful you Wonderbolts shut down every winter,” said Wind Rider cheerfully. “Canterlot bureaucrats have a lot to answer for, don’t they?”
Spitfire slammed the door behind her. Already, the temperature difference was bowling her over, and she swayed slightly where she stood. Back in his room, the plate remained on the table exactly where he’d abandoned it. Knowing him, he probably had a sink full of dirty dishes.
Well, she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to wash up for him, or sweep the floor, or tidy the place up, or do anything that’d mean staying here any longer. Definitely not.
“I hope you enjoyed that,” she said coolly. “Because I’ve got work to do back home.”
“Ah yes,” said Wind Rider, leaning back on his chair and smirking at her. “Wonderbolts have everything to do with pencil-pushers now, don’t they?”
Spitfire bristled. He knew exactly what he was doing. She could see the steel sheathed behind his eyes.
When she turned to leave, however, the chair clattered. He must have moved at quite a speed.
“Don’t go yet!” he snarled. “This was barely three hours! You owe me more than that!”
Willing herself to remain calm, cool, and professional in a clinical kind of way, she simply said, “I owe you one day every year, and then that’s it. Nothing about the arrangement says how many hours I actually spend here.”
Like a needle, his voice stuck deeper and deeper. “Of course, you owe me a lot more than that, Spitfire. But no matter. No matter now. If you like, head on back home. Tell Stormy I’m in good health. Whatever keeps you light in the air, I’m fine with that.”
Spitfire knew what was coming. The ice sheets of his words slid across the surface, exactly as they did every time she came here. Nothing left this room. Nothing betrayed her to the outside world, except a promise to her mother that she’d visit him at least once a year.
When Soarin’ had found out, he’d just assumed Stormy and Wind Rider had been good friends once. Everyone knew Stormy was so forgiving…
Powered by a surge of icy fear, Spitfire hurried to the door without so much as a glance behind her –
“Of course, you would be chummy with Canterlot bureaucrats,” said Wind Rider coldly. “Passed on from your parents, no doubt.”
She was frozen to the spot.
Fear, rage, uncertainty: all held her there, one hoof raised to the door, frown unmoving on a face used to frowning at newbies. And to think, all these years she’d looked up at him as though he were a magnificent rainbow…
Anyone who knew Spitfire – Drill Sergeant Spitfire, who had reduced many a young cadet to a heap of doubt-drenched jelly, whose nickname was so foul that Equestrian statute forbade her from saying it out loud, to whom the rank of Captain of the Wonderbolts had flowed as easily as a leaf on a clear stream – would have been astonished to see her bite her lip. Hard. Hard enough to cut the skin.
Even nowadays, with the scandal still in print, Stormy Flare – her mother – had talked about Wind Rider as an old friend. How great he’d been in his youth. How sad it was he was no longer popular, as though trying to get a Wonderbolt thrown off the team hadn’t factored into it. How he’d been so proud of his one achievement.
Stormy Flare wasn’t one of the old gang, of course. Merely a couple of years ago, Wind Rider had joked – in this very room – that she’d been too spry and too fresh-faced to be part of his gang of old fogeys. There was a sort of “middle gang” bridging the generations, though Stormy had admittedly been a bit on the old side of the divide.
For Stormy Flare had promised. Ever since she’d qualified for the Wonderbolts under his supervision, and in spite of his own protests that she’d passed the test fairly, she nevertheless felt the need to make a promise. And when she’d been too old to get out of her house much, she’d sent her daughter Spitfire to do it for her.
Back then, Spitfire had leaped at the chance. It was as good as a second Hearth’s Warming. She’d even had his picture framed and hung over her bed.
Now…
The cracked glass and the snapped wood of the frame had disappeared along with the other junk. Obviously, not even her fellow Wonderbolts knew about her hero worship, much less about said worship’s sudden extinction. She’d been Captain. She’d had to be professional.
Here and now, she woke up to reality.
“You did this to me, remember,” murmured Wind Rider behind her, too far gone even to indulge in bitterness. “After all I did for you.”
Spitfire noticed her hoof was on the handle. Without hesitation, she shoved the door aside and went out, ignoring the muffled shouts in the distance, ignoring the howling winds outside, and especially ignoring the sad, lonely creak of the door before it finally closed.
Once Spitfire was clear of the stink and the contaminating thought of what she’d done, she stretched her wings and flapped and, with the grace of a falcon, threw herself back into the blizzard. Soon, the grey street and the grey walls and the grey shadows of the skyscrapers vanished far below. She watched them until they melted into the mist.
Onwards she flapped. The contours of her wings reported millions of tiny cold stings, but apart from the snowflakes, she was surrounded by pure air. She liked that. This was a transition from one life to another.
Years ago, she’d have drifted through such a whiteout as this with idle daydreams of captaincy floating through her mind. Even now, she heard his voice over those years as crisply as if he were speaking to her right now. He’d told her she’d make a fine captain. Heck, he’d personally recommended her.
She owed him her captaincy. That’s what her mother had said, warmly and with the faraway look in her eyes as she talked on and on about Wind Rider’s glory days and the Griffon Campaign, during which he’d personally knocked a whole platoon of Peregrine Pouncers out of the air.
She owed him her mother’s promise. Not for his sake. For hers. No matter how often Spitfire argued with her mother, Stormy Flare still saw the old fraud as a misunderstood hero. OK, so a hero who’d gone a bit loco near the finish, what with trying to frame Rainbow Dash and everything –
Spitfire had opened her mouth to argue when her mother had said, “And he’s got no one else to see him.”
After a pause, Spitfire had said, “What about family?”
“He doesn’t have one. Now stop being unfair on him and tell him I said happy birthday.”
He doesn’t have one.
Around her, the whiteout left her empty and confused, yet another flake caught in a ceaseless wind.
Worse, she remembered the jab about Canterlot bureaucrats.
Her father, who'd come from Canterlot's upper districts.
Her parents’ first meeting.
Their marriage.
Their best stallion: Wind Rider.
Both of them had been moved, she now suspected, like pawns in a game.
No one really knew, of course. They’d just assumed it was Stormy Flare being nice to everyone. They probably hadn’t seen Wind Rider whispering in her ear, but Spitfire could imagine it.
Why? Because he’d somehow predicted this? Or because, as her mother insisted, he’d really been the hero everyone had thought he was?
The worst part was this: It meant she owed him her very existence.
Because, under the implacable frown of Captain Spitfire of the Wonderbolts, emerging from the fog to see the green hills of familiar Equestria spread out below her, trying to forget those few hours of another pony’s life to become her true self again, determined – utterly and angrily determined – to wash herself and the Wonderbolts of every last trace of Wind Rider’s poison, she remembered the little filly she'd once been. Gazing at the framed smile. Believing her mother’s words. Creating a dream inside her own head.
A promise was a promise, they’d both said, long before the scandal.
Well, a promise was nothing to Spitfire. Unless it was her mother’s.
And her father’s.