//------------------------------//
// 8) Will Somebody Please Outdo Me! 
// Story: Loyalty's Vision 
// by SapphireRose87 
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{Rainbow Dash}

Once we got to the café at the Sixth, we grabbed our food and sat down. As soon as we sat down, I started eating like I had never eaten before. I couldn't help it! I felt a lot hungrier than when my stomach first started growling for some reason. Spitfire and Oliver were looking at me with amusement when I looked up at them. 

"Wow Rainbow," teased Spitfire, "You're really packing it in there aren't you? Are you even chewing your food?"

"Huh?" I said, I went back to eating my food. I took an apple and put the whole entire thing in my mouth. I chewed on it a couple of times before I swallowed it. 

Oliver raised an eyebrow and had a look of concern on his face at the same time. "You might want to slow down, the food's not going to disappear anytime soon!"

"What are you talking about?" This time I picked up an orange, peeled it, chomped on it a couple times and swallowed it whole. 

Before I knew it, I had eaten all of my food. I licked my hooves and dried them with a towel. I waited for Oliver and Spitfire to finish their food. They ate a little slower than I did and I was thinking about going back for seconds but I chose not to.

"You've been eating a lot more than usual Rainbow," Oliver said, "aren't you concerned about gaining weight?"

"Excuse me?" Normally that would give a woman license to slap a guy when they say something like that, but I actually found that question amusing. Just because a girl's eating a lot lately doesn't mean she's going to gain weight. That question was just another way for Oliver to show his overprotectiveness of me.

I was even more amused when I saw Spitfire's shocked expression. "Uh, Agent Oliver, I don't think that's a good thing to say to your wife, unless you have a death wish."

I snorted. "I'm fine Oliver, and no I'm not concerned about gaining weight because fighting the Firewalls burns a lot of calories."

"But you're not fighting the Firewalls this week," Oliver objected, "you're training Spitfire."

"I don't think not fighting Firewalls for a week is gonna make me gain a pound or two. If it does I'll just work it off," I said. "I'll just train on the cliff training inside of AI or in my pocket dimension." 

"Gilda told me about your little fly through a couple of days ago." Oliver said scowling. "What on earth were you thinking? Especially with those partial out of control sonic rainbooms that have been out of control lately. I have no idea why Firewall Eli was there to catch you, but I'm glad he did."

Spitfire tilted her head. "What's a Firewall?"

"It's a very powerful agent that protects every square inch of the Machine and it's called AI by the way," Oliver explained. "The two strongest Firewalls are Firewall Eli and Firewall Molly. I doubt you'll run into any Firewalls unless you're on a high-level assignment. But before you can go on official assignments and figure out what your specialty job will be you'll have a test assignment first. No one knows what their test assignment will be; it can be either a high-level assignment or a low- level assignment."

"My test assignment was a high-level assignment to go to the gates and get past a Firewall," I said, "and the Firewall that I fought just so happens to be the guy that's getting on my nerves, Firewall Eli. I just about died fighting him but that's how I retrieved my element of harmony and I almost destroyed a gate on top of that. So I passed the assignment. That's when I got the job of fighting the Firewalls. According to Samantha, that's a high-level job category. For some reason I got the number one spot for the job and to me, that spot is up for grabs! I'd be happy to give it to you, Spitfire!"

Spitfire chuckled and shook her head. "I don't think so, you're probably going to have that job for a long time Rainbow. What spot are you in for your job Agent Oliver?"

"Well my job category is the Breakout Assignments," said Oliver, "I'm at spot number two and I'm fine where I am in the ranks. As long as I don't go to the bottom, I'm good. I just do my job to the best of my ability. The main reason why an agent would get to the bottom of the job category is if they could care less about it. There's been a couple of agents that have been moved to the bottom at the tenth and eleventh spot lately. That's because they don't care to get trigger responses from the person they're trying to breakout. Most of the time it happens because the agents throw a hissy fit because of not being the team captain."

"And Agent Great and Powerful Trixie is getting ready to lose the number one spot." I heard Finn say as he sat down next to Oliver.

"How's it going?" Oliver asked.

"It's going pretty good," Finn replied, "at least I get a lunch break today. Most of the time I grab a bite to eat in between assignments. Wow, it looks like Spitfire's already made a full transformation! Who did it?"

"That would be me," I said proudly, "Princess Luna gave me the ability to dream walk and start Spitfire's transformation. I was only supposed to give her wings and a tail but for some reason she came out fully transformed."

"Yeah," said Spitfire, "and it's awesome to have my old body back and now I have Rainbow Dash as a flying partner. I wonder what I'm going to be trained on today? As long as Agent Oliver doesn't let Rainbow Dash do that blood barrier thing again, I'm good."

Finn raised an eyebrow and looked at Oliver. "Did she go over the time limit?"

Oliver shook his head. "Nope, she didn't even get close to it." He pointed at my empty plate of food. "You should've seen the mountain of food she just ate."

Spitfire rolled her eyes. "Yup, she just shoveled her food in like she's never eaten before."

Finn gave me a curious look. "I've heard the things that have been happening with you lately Rainbow Dash. Trust me, if your Predictor is concerned, then The Founders are concerned too."

When Finn finished his food his watch beeped and a green button on it lit up. "Well that break was short-lived. See you around."

After Finn left, it was time for us to start training Spitfire for today.


*	*	*


As Oliver and I were taking Spitfire to the training room, I saw Gilda pull Spitfire off to the side. "Hey Spitfire, it's nice to finally see you again. You probably don't remember me but I'm Rainbow Dash's best friend Gilda. I just wanted to inform you on what everyone calls the 'Gilda line' around here."

I gave Gilda a bewildered look and thought, What on earth is Gilda up to?

I saw Gilda whispering into Spitfire's ear and her ear perked up at whatever Gild told her. Gilda pointed at herself while puffing out her chest and said with pride, "And I'm the one that started it!"

Spitfire laughed and came up to us.

I raised an eyebrow. "What was that all about?"

Oliver chuckled, "I'm going to take a wild guess and say Gilda just told Spitfire the 'Gilda line!"

Spitfire grinned. "Yup!"

Don't say it, please don't say it… I thought.

To my surprise Spitfire and Oliver said the line at the same time, "She's tough, she's fast and she's the definition of the word awesome!"

I did a facehoof and growled, "I'm so going to pay Gilda back for that in full one of these days."

Spitfire giggled, "Good luck with that."

I paused. "Did you just giggle at me?"

Before Spitfire giggled again, Oliver covered his mouth to stifle a laugh. Spitfire squeed at me and I raised an eyebrow. "Wow Spitfire, I've never known you to be this girly before."

"I'm pretty sure I wasn't always a tough tomboy all the time," responded Spitfire, "just like you probably weren't crashing into things all the time either."

"How do you remember that?" I asked. "You've only been at the Sixth for a few days now!"

"After I had that dream of you bucking me into a wall," said Spitfire, "I went back to sleep and had another memory. It was when you first became a Wonderbolt and got a spot on the main team, it was your first routine. Somehow you lost your flight pattern and crashed into a nearby trash can. I remember the rest of the team calling you Rainbow Crash after that."

"Yeah and Pinkie Pie just had to tell me at least they didn't call me Rainbow Trash!" I growled.

Spitfire went from giggling to pissed off after hearing that. "I can't believe somepony would say something so insulting!"

She stomped her hoof on the ground in anger.

"It's okay calm down Spitfire," I said, "I never thought I'd say this, but let's go into the creepy white room that makes my skin crawl and start your training already." 


*	*	*


When we went into the white room for Spitfire's training, she looked around the room confused. "So why is this creepy?"

"Because it reminds me of the white room in an insane asylum that I used to work at before I started working for JJ Inc. I was happy to help those that needed the help, of course there were some patients that I wasn't sure if they needed the help. But there were some people that I was happy with when they got well enough to be sent home," I responded.

"Why did you stop working there?" Oliver asked.

"I got tired of it," I replied, "I decided I needed a change of pace and that's when I started working at JJ Inc."

"What didn't you tell me about that?" Oliver said, raising an eyebrow.

"Like I told Pinkie Pie it's in the past and in the past is where it will stay," I answered. "Just because you're my husband doesn't mean you have to know my history. Now we please change this room into something else?"

"Hmm," said Oliver staring up at the ceiling, "let's see here, Spitfire, you've already gotten your full body back, we should probably get your wings working."

"How do we get my wings working?" Spitfire asked. "Shouldn't I be able to fly automatically?"

Oliver shook his head. "Nope, just because you can fly in a dream doesn't mean you can fly in real life. I've seen this happen with a couple of ponies that have been broken out of AI. Did you notice you're not even using your wings yet?"

Spitfire craned her neck behind her back only to see that her wings were tucked in and not flapping. "Huh, I didn't notice that."

"Maybe you should show her the basics Rainbow?" Oliver suggested.

I nodded. "Okay sure," I turned to Spitfire, "so to start you need to untuck your wings like this."

I forced myself to stop hovering and tucked my wings back in and then untucked them. Spitfire copied what I did and before we knew it, she was hovering just like me.

I looked at Oliver, "Exactly how are we going to help her use her wings?"

"Here's a couple of landscapes that can be turned into obstacle courses," Oliver said. 

"Like?" I prompted.

"Let's see," said Oliver, "there is the cloud landscape, that's probably the easiest one."

Spitfire shook her head rapidly. "Oh no, Agent Oliver, I'm not starting on an easy level. Na-uh!"

"Okay," said Oliver, he paused and looked at her thoughtful gaze, "there's the fly through landscape which is what Rainbow was doing a couple of days ago." He frowned at me. "I don't know what you were thinking Rainbow or why Gilda let you go through with it. Anyway, there's the cliff dive which is the hardest one to do."

"Wait!"  I felt my ears perk up as I looked at him. "Did you say cliff dive?"

Oliver nodded slowly. "Yeah so?"

"That's the landscape Gilda trained me with my weapon on!" I exclaimed with excitement.

"She did what?" Oliver gasped. 

"Hey Princess Twilight let her," I said defensively, "and I was doing fine until I had another memory and no I don't want to talk about it. Anyway, I was doing fine until about five feet from the bottom until I lost my flight pattern and crashed."

Spitfire snorted. "Yup, Rainbow Crash is a good pet name for you alright!"

Spitfire went into a fit of laughter and Oliver joined in. After a while Oliver cleared his throat, "I think we should do the Fly Through Landscape then. We'll train on that for an hour and then we'll see what type of weapon your pattern gives you."

"Rainbow?" Spitfire said as she turned to me. 

"Yes?" I replied.

Spitfire had a mischievous smile on her face. "How's about a race?"

"Okay, what are the rules for it?" I asked. 

"No rules," said Spitfire, "just bragging rights."

I titled my head. "Bragging rights for what?"

"It's about time somepony outdid you," said Spitfire, "and I'm going to be that somepony!"

I beamed and said in agreement, "It's about time somepony outdid me, you're on!"

When I turned around to see that Oliver had accessed the blood barrier and the room changed into a Fly Through Obstacle Course. Spitfire was all too eager to start the race; she flew off the cliff so fast I didn't get a chance to count to three. I thought for sure she was going to beat me. But I guess since she hadn't flown in real life for a while of course I won the first race. 

Spitfire wanted to do best out of four. Spitfire won the first two races and I won the other two. "Darn! I thought for sure I was going to win on that last one." Spitfire said while panting. Then she shrugged. "Oh well, I guess it's a tie."

I sat down and bit my tongue in frustration when we got back to the edge of the cliff where we started. I couldn't believe that Spitfire, the one pony who wanted to outdo me would shrug this off so casually. Spitfire looked at me confused. "What's the matter, Rainbow?"

"I was hoping someone would outdo me for a change!" I sulked. "I mean, Gilda can't even outdo me anymore!"

Spitfire laughed and gave me an amused look. "Wow, I've never seen somepony sulking because they didn't lose!"

I heard Oliver laughing and I wondered how he could do that considering how painful the blood barrier was. "Okay Spitfire, let's see what weapon your pattern gives you."

Without warning just like he did to me when I was training, Oliver went over to Spitfire and plucked out one of her feathers. She jumped back in surprise when he did that. The room changed and had numbers scrolling across all four walls.

"Those are the numbers that look like the numbers that were in my cell!" Spitfire gasped.

Oliver nodded. "Uh-huh, every agent has a pattern when they break out of AI."

Oliver then circled the numbers on the walls of Spitfire's pattern and after that the numbers stopped moving. A drawer opened up and Spitfire's weapon looked just as unique as mine or so I thought. 

The weapon looked like a round metal disc and it was a medium sized weapon. It also had a line going down the middle of it. "What type of weapon is that?"

"It's a breakaway shield," said Oliver, "it's actually a very common weapon used by agents in the Sixth."

"Isn't that like the shield you use, Oliver?" I asked.

Oliver shook his head. "Nope my shield is a high-level weapon like yours. There's no way I can train her in using this. When it comes down to training someone to use their weapon it has to be an agent that has the same weapon in order to train them. However, there are some agents that master using this weapon and can make top rankings at whatever job category they get assigned to."

"Is there a chance Spitfire can make high rankings in the Sixth?" I pondered.

"I don't know," said Oliver, "some agents do and some agents don't. That goes for training with any type of weapon in the Sixth. It's up to the agent to develop their skills. But since it's Spitfire we're talking about she just might make top ranks."

I looked at Spitfire and smiled. "Let's hope your specialty job is fighting the Firewalls. Like I said, the number one spot is up for grabs! I would rather be right in the middle back at the number five spot thankyou very much."

Oliver pulled out of the blood barrier and handed Spitfire her weapon. Spitfire gave him a wary look. "That blood barrier thing does not look pleasant."

"It's not," I sighed, "but you're going to have to learn it before the end of your six-day training."

"Not looking forward to that!" Spitfire said.

Oliver nodded. "Yeah I understand that's the hardest part training an agent that works for the Sixth on their six-day training. Now, the best agent of the Sixth to train you on your weapon is Agent Rarity! She's another element of harmony bearer the Element of Generosity."