It began, as always, with an excuse.
Tonight, it was that he was out of milk for the bowl of Frosted Haybales he had poured. He had plenty of other food to eat, of course; there was a tray of depressingly gray mashed potatoes and technicolor carrots in the freezer, and a few cans of middling quality sardines lined the top shelf of his cabinet, which, when combined with the nearly if not quite stale crackers on the next shelf down were a passable meal for a bachelor. Truthfully, it wasn’t like he exactly needed to be eating anything at one in the Saturday morning, but those were rational concerns, and they could be safely ignored long enough for a pair of flight goggles to appear on his face and him to clack – clack – clack to the door and it to close on his tiny fourth floor apartment, long enough still for him to swan-dive from the railing and into a mostly-deserted Cloudsdale skyway.
He threw out his wings, catching the ever-present jet-stream of air that slid around the bends and buildings of the city along the sky-road’s track. Flying wasn’t as demanding as running, as a rule, but it was still a fairly strenuous physical activity, and there was a good reason why most pegasus cities up until very recent history were tightly packed vertical stacks; namely, cheap airspace on the edge of town is a small comfort when one ends up drenched in sweat showing up to work. But the clever stallions and mares of the world had figured out how to permanently direct currents of air, forming pathways in which a pegasus needed only to throw out their wings and be more or less carried forth; subsequently, the suburbs exploded, and now the majority of the population lived far enough from the city center to hear two or three songs on an ear-transmitter radio to completion.
But he wasn’t interested in skyways because of a hobby of urban planning.
He was interested because it meant going fast.
His flared out wings stalled, stalled, stalled, there, primaries rustling as they caught the wind, and he gave a single hard flap, propelling himself up to the air current’s speed, positioning himself into the passing lane with a twist of the last few feathers on his left wing. He gave the side of his goggles a tap, blinking as their enchantments projected a heads-up display across the glass; velocity on the top right, altitude on the top left, thaumic counter-scanners tuned to the resonance of the Cloudsdale Police speed enforcement spells throughout the rest of the glass.
A look left. No tell-tale splash of violet across the lower half of his vision.
A look right. Nothing there either.
His body tensed, tucking his good foreleg all the way in to cut drag, then wings up, down, tilt, down, up, down, up–
The velocity incremented upwards; twenty over, thirty over, fifty over, double over, and markerlights along the sky-way blurred into off-yellow ropes that left trails in his peripheral vision, like Celestia herself was coaxing him faster, faster, faster, a flared-out glide around a gentle right-hoof sweeper that led into a straightaway, then go again, push the number up, up, nearing triple–
Ahead, a big pony hauling a carriage full of something pink, trundling along in the other lane. Courteously, a wing-flare up to near vertical, feathers splayed out to push up drag, the number dropped to a more respectable twenty over, because there was no reason to annoy somepony else by screaming by their left ear and buffeting them in downdraft.
The draft-pegasus gave him a nod as he slid by in a glide, probably wishing it was him.
He returned the nod, then let himself get couple dozen lengths ahead of his fellow flier before pushing, back up to speed, back up to unrespectable velocities, and the lights blurred out again into–
A sign ahead, illuminated green. Already? His exit, if he wanted to get that milk from the all-night convenience store, and he did want to get that milk, because that was why he was out here in the first place, right? Get some milk for those Frosted Haybales, then go home and eat said Haybales.
But on the other hand, two exits down…
Well, it was an all-night convenience store, after all. What was a few more hours?
That settled it. Back over to the left, back on the thrust, letting the instinctual pegasus brain which screamed at all hours of the day for speed and wind and acceleration take over and melt into a pleasant mush of dopamine as the buildings and spotlights and noise of a Cloudsdale suburb greyed out into amorphous pudding, eyes laser focused on the skyway ahead, mind running on inscribed memories of the hundreds of times he’d done this – speed speed speed brake here wings out grab the air feel the push-back from the boundary hold hold hold go flap flap flap glide wait turn wait go go go don’t look to the side ignore that sign it’s one more to the exit to the mountains six more turns go go go five more go go go four more wings out glide decreasing radius watch the boundary three more two sweepers power down through these up to triple brake hard for the last one slow down slow down – exit.
Wings out, he bled speed precipitously, down to the limit, and slid over into the other sky-lane before exiting from the main sky-road with a flick of the wings, coming to a stop at the threshold of a minor thoroughfare which slunk its way around the tops of scenic mountains. He paused for a moment, gulping air and looking back over his body, which had accumulated a thin layer of froth from the physical effort.
Better pick up some more soap from the store too, then.
Catching his breath, he looked left; clear.
He looked right; empty.
He transitioned from a hover into forward flight, angling his body as to not be shocked by the incoming rush of – there it was, just a little, the side roads didn’t have nearly the same push as the skyways – then flapped a few times, climbing the mountainside towards a row of precariously perched villas.
Cloudsdale moved, a little constantly, a lot occasionally, but it didn’t move so much that some intrepid ponies with a little more of a love of terra firma couldn’t maneuver a nice home near a mountain top and soak in majestic views of unspoiled valleys of endless green during the day, and, thanks to the sky-road system, these houses could be connected to the rest of Cloudsdale, giving the ponies within only slightly longer of a commute.
But the important thing was that sky-roads had to be loops for the magic to work, so the aero-engineers couldn’t just line the sunrise-facing and thus desirable side of the mountain with a channel, they had to loop it all the way around the range, leaving lengths and lengths of useless air snaking around deserted mountain sides. They were pointless for commuters, who had no need for an extra hour of time between home and work. They were painful for the city, who was stuck maintaining delicate magical constructs virtually nopony had any need for.
They were perfect for him, and every other pony like him.
He cruised past dark house after house, letting the air currents lazily float him along as he ran the list of passing mailboxes through his head, counting through the houses until he reached the end of the residential area; screaming past cloud foundations and porches was as stupid as it was dangerous, especially when needed only to count to one hundred fourteen to be past every single precarious intersection. A few more lazy turns, numbers climbing all the while, each one rattling through his head like mantras: ninety-eight, one hundred, one oh two. He could see the final house now, an ugly Classical Unicornist thing, with windows with too many points and spires, and he surreptitiously increased his speed just a little, hastening his closing with the end both to get to the fun part and to clear his vision of that architectural disgrace and replace it with canyon vistas and city lights.
There. One hundred fourteen passed by in a blink on a green mailbox which appeared to him all the more like a green flag in a race marshal's hoof and he tucked his full legs back up and flattened his ears and pounded his wings and rocketed forwards, quickly outstripping the meager spell-wind of the sky-road so completely as to make it nearly imperceptible.
He had done this so many times now, so many late nights, so many excuses to come out here, that every single turn of this mountain felt like it was programmed into his motor cortex – his eyes merely confirmed, rather than indicated. A dart left – there was that first hairpin right, so slow, slow, bite the corner with a high angle of attack turn, then yaw, side-slip through the apex to bleed off speed, then thrust thrust thrust, move so much air the pebbles scatter in the wake because this was one of the long straights, watch as the mountainside melts into gray and drag your eyes away from white smear of the center markerlights, eyes up to confirm what your counted wing-beats told you five-four-three-two-one-there and brake, play off the air-current’s threshold for extra lift and drag yourself around the left-hoof turn with powerful flaps but don’t watch the wall because if you do you’ll chicken out and stall and fly into the rocks and you won’t fly out.
Not this time.
He melted into the fugue state of speed, every meaningless niggling sensation fading away as the basal processes of the pegasus greedily sucked down every thought he could possibly create, the growing burn of lactic acid in his flight muscles and uncomfortable press of his magi-goggles and chill of wind-cooled sweat completely imperceptible, every possible neuron dedicated entirely to the maintenance of velocity and playback of his memories of this flight. He screamed along the route, decently impressive physical attributes magnified immensely by the sheer perfection with which his brain dictated every motion, eyes locked forwards in utter focus, sliding past scenery, not pausing to take in even –
Forwards, on an outcrop, blue, wings, mare. Oh, hello. It seems even the trance of speed had its limits, and a mare was one of them.
He flared out his wings, pushing walls of air forwards and coming to a halt, eyes seeking for another glimpse of – a-ha, there she was, stretching out a wing on a roadside outcrop. Another look, squinting in the Mare on the Moon’s dim light; definitely blue, a shock of multi-colored hair to match a similarly prismatic mark, the mane held in tightly by a pair of flight goggles, small, supremely athletic, decently cute, young – far too young, actually, because that was an Advanced Flight School cadet jacket full of patches but no varsity letters. No great loss, that; he wasn’t out here to pick up chicks, but to horrifically violate speed ordinances. Still, there was plenty of fun to be had here. He slipped out of the air stream, alighting upon a rock with a “clack” from an unnaturally hard front left foreleg.
The little blue pegasus turned around, looking him once over and raising an eyebrow. He knew that look, because he used the same one when he was her age: “Really, old guy?” Never mind the fact that he was twenty-six, of course; to a teenager, everypony older than they are is old.
He gave a curt nod back – “Yeah, really.” – then gestured back to the sky-road with a wing. The mare snorted a laugh, rolling her eyes and coming to her hooves, trotting over to the precipice of the air-current and sticking in a hoof. With a nod, he flapped his wings once, carrying him into the current. After a moment his opponent drew alongside, smirk still plastered on her face. He pointed with a hoof at an approaching marker sign, then turned to his side. She nodded, satisfied with his choice of start line, then pulled her goggles down.
The sign drew nearer, nearer, nearer, there! He flung his wings down, pulling ahead and –
Whoa. The other pegasus was screaming ahead; he was no slouch, but she was a rocket, and was moving away from him like he was standing still. He sighed; losses happened, and it wasn’t the first time he’d had his flank spanked by a superior flier out here. Still, he managed to keep her in sight, if distantly, and watched as she neared the first corner, watching her brake, no, brake, no, finally she air-braked hard, wings extended fully and speed dropping to a crawl before she clumsily navigated the turn, apex all wrong and speed fluctuating but staying universally low as she rounded the bend.
Maybe this wasn’t hopeless after all, just do the usual – brake just a little, into the corner, then dig into the air, push push push through the apex, keeping up speed as he clawed his way out of the corner, finally regaining sight of that multi-colored tail, now much closer than before he had lost sight. Squeeze the thrust back on, she would walk him on the straightaways, but her corners were sloppy, and there were far more corners coming up than straights. He pointedly forced his eyes down, away from his opponent, towards the markerlights, feeling himself slip back into that supreme isolation; left turn coming up, medium tightness, brake a little harder than before, apply a little side-slip to yaw into the turn, slide across the apex, go go go, push out of the corner and onto the little straightaway before the next turn, a right hairpin, brake way down, corner hard and early, keep up speed because you’re already down on it compared to the lightning bolt you’re racing, then power out as hard as you can, as early as you can.
He could see her in that top periphery of his vision, just a tail snaking along the track of the air currents, one who he was closing with with every turn. She missed an another entry, braking too early this time and crawling through the apex, pushing hard out of the corner but still slow and he didn’t miss, giving only the slightest flare as he howled along the inside edge, dipping a primary into the swirling vortices at the threshold of the sky-road and gripping through that drag, slinging out of the corner near top speed. Four more turns ahead, medium right, hairpin left, another hard right, then a long right sweeper which tightened out of view, and he reeled her in through every single one, keeping his speed up through the bends and she didn’t, flubbing entrances and missing apexes and she grew closer and closer and–
She looked back, wide eyed, shocked at the proximity, and bolted, screaming out of the hard right into the sweeper, wings pumping hard, too hard, and she didn’t brake as the curve tightened in, wings flying up to maximum attack far too late and she stalled, careening over the edge, mercifully away from the mountainside and instead into the blanket of darkness that coated the valley.
He pulled out of the air-road with a gentle loop, bleeding speed into a hover. He pulled off his goggles, doing his best to peer into the black. She was probably fine – there wasn’t much to hit in the valley, and a flier as talented as she could easily pull out of a dive like that, but he still stopped just in case; members of this little group of lawbreakers looked out for each other. He spotted her after a moment, technicolor tail sticking out of a cloud bank, two hooves below. He dove down, swirling around the puffy cumulus once before coming to rest atop the surface.
“Want some help?”
The cloud groaned, which probably meant “yes.”
He put a fore-hoof on each exposed leg, yanking the pegasus out of the cloud. She shook a little cloud out of her mane, watching as it floated into the air, then fluffed her wings, scowling in something between embarrassment and anger at the old guy who had the nerve to beat her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, both about her pride and her body, because there were already enough pegasi who, frustrated over being out-flown, subsequently out-flew themselves into a mountain wall, which was not as yielding as a cloudbank.
“Duh,” she shot back, “it’s just a cloud. I’m fine.”
“Sure.” He looked her over. “How old are you?”
She took a step back, wings flaring in alarm. “Why do you want to know?”
Oh, right, she probably thought – He shook his head “Not like that. Just curious.”
“Oh, okay.” She thought for a moment. “I’m, uh, seventeen.”
“Still in flight school?” He pointed at her jacket.
“Yeah.” She pulled her goggles back, bright eyes catching starlight. “The big courses get boring, so I thought I’d try this out.”
He raised an eyebrow. “This is your first time out here?”
“No,” she huffed back, a little indignant. “I’ve gone around twice. This is my first time with, uh, somepony else, though.”
“Oh.” He rubbed the back of his head with his good hoof, well aware of the absurdity of lecturing somepony he was less than a decade ago. “That probably wasn’t your, uh. best idea. Give it a few more flights, okay?”
“Sure, whatever.” She shrugged. “Why do you care?”
“Because I was you once, and I made the same mistake you did.” He snorted. “But I made it on a left turn, not a right.”
“Oh.” A moment of realization, because a left turn meant into the mountain. “Oh!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Whoa.” She shook her head, wide-eyed. “But you were okay, right, ‘cause you’re here, right?”
“Mostly.” Pulling down a tight fitting spandex sock, he waved a metal left hoof in front of a rapidly blanching face, chuckling darkly. “Most of me is.” The jingle of buckles on prosthesis flittered through the night. “Just be careful, okay?”
A short nod, eyes shooting from metal hoof to owner to the sky-road above.
“Good.” He flared out his wings, taking to a hover. “Because not everypony is as lucky as I am.” He pushed up to the road, pulling his goggles back down and speeding back up.
He still had sixteen more corners, after all.
He put the bottle of milk on the counter at exactly three-thirty in the morning. The cashier, never taking his face off his foreleg, pointed to the front of the cash register; five bits.
He reached back, feeling under one wing. He found nothing.
He reached under the other. Empty.
Ah. He knew he’d forgotten something.