Two point three.
Eepy had busted her flank all week, worked as hard as she could to get her numbers up. She’d frankly amazed me with how hard she was willing to work and her utter determination to keep going no matter how painful it got. She threw herself into the training, pushed herself beyond her limits just to prove to everypony that she wasn’t going to let a couple stupid bullies from way back in Flight Camp hold her back. It was a brand new Fluttershy—she’d traded out being weak and helpless for strength and determination. She threw everything she had into bumping her wingpower numbers up as far as they could go.
And what did she have to show for all her hard work? Two point feathering three wingpower.
I considered going to her and trying to offer some comfort, but what could I say? I’d promised I would help her get her wingpower numbers up, and I hadn’t. Hay, dumping Alula on her probably did a lot to distract from all the training. Eepy’s always been the type who will put somepony else’s needs above her own, and I should’ve known that putting a sick filly in front of her would make it just about impossible for her to focus on her training.
So instead of trying to help Eepy feel better about the fact that Tornado Day was tomorrow and she wasn’t anywhere close to Rainbow’s wingpower goal, I was ... well technically I was dropping by Mom’s place to pick up a couple things for ‘Lula. Nothing major, just a couple of the ordinary little things like her toothbrush. Between Mom getting called up on a short-notice emergency deployment and ‘Lula being sick, they hadn’t exactly done a great job of packing.
Well, if I was being completely honest, I was probably doing more indulging in a bit of general mopiness than picking up ‘Lula’s things. It’s not like anypony could blame me for feeling a bit down about Eepy’s troubles, even before you tossed in some of the other issues I had hanging over my head, like what to do about Blossom and Derpy. Officially I was just putting all my time into helping Eepy, but there’s really no point in lying about it. I was avoiding both of them.
It’s a perfectly understandable reaction, considering what I’d figured out about my problems with the two of them. Realizing that you’re in love with three different ponies is the kinda thing that’ll knock a pony back on their hooves for a bit. Well, I already knew I was in love with Eepy, but that wasn’t a problem. I was pretty comfortable with loving Eepy, and we’d already made some progress in sorting that out. We loved each other, but banging and romance just weren’t in the cards for us. Not to say it could never happen, but Eepy wasn’t about to jump into the messy love triangle I’d gotten myself mixed up in and turn it into some sort of love square-thingy. We needed a lot of time to get back to normal before the possibility of any kind of banging even entered the equation. Not to mention that Eepy probably couldn’t make any effort to take me from Blossom and Derpy without feeling utterly horrible about it. That kind of tooth-and-hoof competition just wasn’t in her nature.
Of course, if I wound up being single, we probably would end up taking another shot at, well, us. Competition might not be in her nature, but if Derpy and Blossom weren’t a factor I’m pretty sure she’d jump on the opportunity. Eepy would never break somepony else’s heart just for her own happiness, but if she got what she wanted offered to her on a silver platter...
Anyway, if Eepy and I were keeping our love deep but strictly platonic (for the moment) that was one less thing to worry about. Still left me with a big problem when it came to Blossom and Derpy.
Unlike Eepy, the two of them had made it pretty clear that when push came to shove, they’d fight over me. As flattering as having two beautiful mares fighting over me was, the only way that kind of conflict would end was in heartbreak. I wanted both of them, and they both wanted me. With how much they were not getting along right now, I wasn’t exactly optimistic about my chances of working out a way to have that not be a problem.
Ugh, enough moping. I was here for a reason, and it was past time I got it taken care of. Unlike the whole Derpy and Blossom thing, I could at least help ‘Lula feel a bit better by picking up her manebrush, favorite pillow cloud, and a couple other little things. Nothing huge, but those tiny little homey touches might be just the thing to keep her spirits up. Plus I had no idea how long 'Lula was even going to be staying with me. When it comes to something like a short-notice emergency deployment, the only answer I was likely to get was something along the lines of ‘I’ll be back when the Guard doesn’t need me anymore.’
It had been a while since I’d been by my parents’ cloud-house. Well, I guess technically it was just Mom’s now, ever since Dad moved back to Canterlot. In any case, the move hadn’t really changed the house much. Probably because there wasn’t much to change—like I’ve said before, cloud-houses tend to be pretty spartan unless you really wanna spend the bits and go to the effort of fancying them up, which neither of my parents did.
Not that bits would’ve been an issue if my parents really wanted to beautify their Ponyville house a bit. The Kickers aren’t exactly swimming in money, but any family that sticks around as long as the Kickers have will start picking up assets. Buy up a blacksmith so we could get discounts on our gear, have somepony save up their pay from the Guard to start up a small business once they were done with their tour, stuff like that. Multiply that by almost a thousand years, and you get quite the hodgepodge of business interests. Quite a few of the Kickers who’d retired from the Guard or wound up unfit to serve had full-time jobs managing all of it.
That’s not to mention the odd times like with Mom where a noble marries into the family. Adding her inheritance to the clan patrimony certainly wouldn’t hurt, even if it was just a minor little barony. Of course, if Mom hadn’t married into a family that went by old Pegasopolan customs (and aside from the Kickers, not many did) then I would be inheriting the land instead of it going into the clan patrimony. Not that I was complaining—I can’t exactly imagine I’d fit in too well with all the stuffy Canterlot nobles. Besides, Mom was from House Cumulus, and with how many ponies were in that house her inheritance wasn’t much anyway. In all likelihood, being a Kicker just meant I wouldn’t get to manage half a dozen mud farms in the middle of nowhere.
So yeah, the bottom line is that my family might have some money, but we never spent it on a bunch of luxuries and stuff. Guard life does tend to encourage a kind of utilitarian outlook on things. Not a single thing had changed since the last time I’d dropped by the house. The secret cloud-compartment in Mom’s office was still in the same place.
One of the downsides of living in clouds, it’s hard to make a locked door or wall-safe or just about any kind of security really. Even if you did go to all the trouble of installing a wall safe for anything you wanted to keep private (like whatever Guard stuff Mom was working on), when the walls are made out of cloud it’s pretty easy to just steal the whole safe.
Instead of one big stash kept in a supposedly-impenetrable fixture, most pegasi rely on hidden little cloud compartments. It’s pretty easy to just have a random chunk of wall, roof, or floor hide a tiny little space, and if you don’t know where to look you could spend days looking. Or at least, anypony whose special talent isn’t cloud manipulation would need to. I’d kinda found my parents secret stash by accident a couple years back—I noticed the floor felt kinda funny in this one spot and decided to check it out, and next thing I know I’ve got classified documents in my hooves. That could’ve gotten awkward fast.
Though I’ll admit that I was maybe just a little tempted to have a look through whatever secret stuff my parents had access to, I resisted the urge and put everything back where I found it. Getting my parents in trouble for a security breach like that just would’ve been bad for everypony.
Why was I even in Mom’s office anyway? Ugh, my brain must be a little scattered, though between the troubles with my love life and how badly Eepy’s wingpower test went I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that I couldn’t quite focus.
“Okay.” I grumbled under my breath. “Soon as I’m done here, I’m gonna go do something cathartic. No idea what, but I need to do something to get all these horseapples off my mind.” Too bad I couldn’t just go with my usual solution of finding somepony cute to bang—right now, doing that would probably just make things even more complicated than they were already.
Before I could come up with another form of stress relief, I heard something crashing around in the attic. It might seem a little silly to have an attic in a cloud house since there’s no structural reason for it, but my parents tend to make their cloud-houses more-or-less exactly like a ground-house, just with different building materials. Probably because they’ve spent most of their lives living groundside, so why change things up now?
I hopped out through the wall and looped around so I could pass through the walls of my attic. I could’ve gone through the floor, but the attic is carpeted so my parents can use it for storage. Probably what caused all the commotion up there—some bird tried to fly through the clouds, and suddenly ran into a bunch of boxes and other solid objects.
I entered the attic and found—well, I’d been mostly right. The only thing I hadn’t got right was that the winged creature that crashed into attic wasn’t a bird. “Hey, Derpy.”
Derpy pulled a mostly empty cardboard box off her head, and shook some packing peanuts out of her mane and ears. “Hi, Cloud Kicker.” She shot me a sheepish smile and finished disentangling herself from something that looked like one of Mom’s old dress uniforms. “Guess I found you.”
“Guess you did.” I would’ve preferred it if Derpy didn’t crash into my Mom’s attic, but if you wanna be with Derpy, you just kind of have to accept that some collateral damage is going to happen. At least nothing was broken, just a little low-level chaos. “So, why were you looking for me?”
Derpy’s smile faded into a worried frown, and she got to work carefully putting up everything she’d knocked out of place. It was a couple seconds before she answered me. “I saw what happened with Fluttershy’s wingpower test. I thought you might want somepony to talk to. You weren’t at home, and you weren’t with ... any of the ponies you would go to if you wanted to talk. So I started looking around, until...” She gave a little shrug, then nodded towards the hole in my Mom’s roof.
I gave a couple flaps of my wings, and closed up said hole. “Thanks, Derpy. You don’t need to worry about me, though. I’m—I won’t say I’m not feeling a bit down about how things went, but I can handle it. Eepy’s the one who could probably use some comforting right now.”
It didn’t look like Derpy was taking the bait. One downside of dating one of your oldest friends—it’s a lot harder to trick a pony who knows how your brain ticks. “You know...” Derpy neatly folded Mom’s old uniform before putting it back up and turning to face me directly. “You did amazingly at helping her. Between the two of you, you more than quadrupled her wingpower in a single week. That’s incredible.”
“Kinda easy to make that kind of jump when she’s so far behind to begin with.” That came out sounding a lot more bitter than I expected it to. I made a couple other little touch-ups on Mom’s roof, just little maintenance stuff to give me something else to think about for a couple seconds. “Sure, we more than quadrupled her effective wingpower, but that’s still less than a quarter of what she needs to hit Rainbow’s goal.” I held up a hoof to forestall the obvious objection. “Yes, I know every bit counts, but I’m not the one who needs to be convinced. Eepy just won’t feel right about herself unless she’s pulling a solid ten just like everypony else.”
Derpy gave an unhappy little shuffle of her wings at that, and I could kinda understand where she was coming from. It’s a little uncomfortable talking about how bad Eepy’s number are when both of us are beating Rainbow’s goal by a healthy margin. One of the perks of us both having jobs that required spending most of the day on our wings.
Then again, nerves might still be dragging down Eepy’s numbers. Hard to know for sure—in hindsight, I really should’ve borrowed Twilight’s anemometer for a bit so I could measure Eepy’s wingpower when she wasn’t freaking out over the fact that a whole lot of ponies were watching her.
Unfortunately, the sad truth was that she probably still wouldn’t be close to Rainbow’s target number even if she was fearless. For the most part, Eepy’s flying had more in the way of precision and delicacy than raw wingpower. It’s not that she was a hopeless flyer or anything, it’s just that what Rainbow needed for Tornado Day was raw muscle, and that was Eepy’s biggest weakness. Derpy might be hopelessly clumsy in the air, but she didn’t lack for raw muscle, so, the fact that Eepy could pull off all kinds of little precision tricks that would only end in collateral damage for Derpy didn’t matter. All that mattered was wingpower.
I sighed and picked up a couple of winter scarves that Derpy had knocked loose. Now that Derpy was here, I knew there was no way we could avoid trying to work out the whole relationship thing. Sure, we could get away with spending a couple days away from each other to sort things out in our own heads, but if the separation went too long we’d end up practically breaking up by default. I definitely didn’t want that happening.
Of course, I wasn’t all that eager to jump into a painful and awkward relationship conversation either. I was almost relieved when Derpy brought up a different topic. “Whoa! Hey, Cloud Kicker, what’s this?”
I turned around to get a good look at whatever Derpy was hopefully not damaging, and my stomach fell. Derpy was studying a full suit of Guard armor resting on top of something that vaguely resembled one of Rarity’s dress forms. I recognized the suit on sight, even though it had been more than seven years since I saw it. Suddenly, the prospect of a difficult talk about where things were going with us didn’t sound so bad.
“It was supposed to be my graduation present for West Hoof,” I confessed. I walked up to the suit of armor and idly adjusted the helmet, which had been knocked very slightly askew, probably by Derpy’s crash-landing. “My own custom-made suit of armor. Thunderforged steel, with a little spidersilk in the joints to give protection while keeping it light and easy to maneuver in. All the usual enchantments, and probably a couple bonuses thrown in. It’s ... real quality work.”
I sighed and traced a hoof along one of the silver highlights on the armor. “Mom and Dad were really looking forward to it. Me graduating and following in their hoofsteps by joining up with the Guard. Luna, the looks on their faces when I told them ... and then the fight we had...” I let out an annoyed little snort and shook my head. “They shouldn’t have spent so much on this for me. Or at least, not something like this. It’s all custom work, no good for anypony else and not exactly the kinda thing you can return to the store and get a refund for.” My voice turned bitter and mocking as I imitated my mother. “Hey, our daughter’s a feather-up, can we get our money back?”
Derpy stepped up next to me, and very tentatively wrapped a wing over my shoulders. “You’re not, Cloud Kicker. You know that, right?”
Yeah, objectively that was true. I had a good job, a home, and was even taking one or two steps towards becoming a semi-respectable member of society. But still... “I probably would’ve made captain by now. Get a nice little company command, or maybe sign on with the Long Patrol and get some monster-hunting experience. It’s dangerous, but getting that kind of combat experience is great for a pony’s career. Hay, my parents were probably planning to groom me for Captain of the Guard some day.” I checked the armor’s wing-blades—still sharp. “Instead, my parents keep this old suit of armor in the attic, polished and maintained so it’ll be ready in case I ever change my mind. Meanwhile, my Dad loses out on his promotion to some noble brat who got in on nepotism ‘cause he had to pull strings to keep me from being classified as a deserter, and my parents’ marriage is falling apart. Not hard to see where it all went wrong.”
Derpy tightened her wing-grip on me and gave my cheek a comforting little nuzzle. “Sweetie, you can’t blame yourself for everything that went wrong with your parent’s lives. Trust me, as a mother I’m quite aware of the fact that my mistakes are my fault, not my daughters’. The same is true for your parents. Besides, you wouldn’t have been happy in the Guard, not if you were just doing it to make your parents happy.”
I let out a frustrated huff of breath and turned my head so I could look at Derpy properly instead of moping over a suit of armor I’d never even worn. “That’s the thing, Derpy: it wasn’t just about making them happy. I liked going to West Hoof, and not just because I had tons of bang-buddies there. I was good at it too, I was close to the top of the class despite spending as much time chasing tail as I did studying. Plus ... well sometimes I think I really did wanna join the Guard, and I just had a case of pre-enlistment jitters. Just about every soldier gets them right before they sign up, except instead of working through them like I should’ve I let them ruin my life.”
Derpy flinched a bit, and didn’t say anything. I had a pretty good idea of what was going through her head right now—a while after she moved to Ponyville, we’d kinda gotten into a fight over the whole me-dropping-out thing. A lot of what made my whole pre-enlistment panic thing so bad was that there wasn’t anypony for me to talk to about it. It’s not like I could tell my parents I was having doubts about the career they’d planned for me practically since the day I was born.
Thing was, Derpy and I had both lived in Canterlot ever since the whole Flight Camp thing. You’d think going to her when I really needed a friend would’ve been the logical thing to do, but we’d probably exchanged less than a dozen words in the five years between Flight Camp and when she moved to Ponyville. Sure, Flight Camp had very obviously messed things up for me with Rainbow and Eepy, but in a lot of ways Derpy keeping her distance from me hurt the most. In hindsight I could understand why things had been so weird between us, but at the time all I cared about was how abandoned I felt.
But there was no point in bringing up ancient history and reopening old wounds now. I let out a low groan and leaned against Derpy, taking what comfort she could offer me. It was a while before I spoke again. “I can’t help but wonder sometimes if ... if it all went horribly wrong somewhere. If I’m supposed to be a Guardpony who married my Flight Camp sweetheart instead of being ... well, me.”
Derpy just let me lean on her for a bit, silently supporting me, until she spoke with gentle reassurance in her voice. “Cloudy, your life is not a mistake. You might not have done what your parents had planned for you, but I think you’ve still made a pretty decent life for yourself. Don’t you think so?”
“I guess,” I agreed without much enthusiasm.
Derpy worried at her lower lip and couldn’t quite bring herself to meet my eyes. After a couple painful moments of silence, she very quietly asked. “Do you really hate your life that much?”
I knew enough about ponies to recognize the real question there, especially with how sad and worried Derpy looked. “It’s not—I don’t hate my life. I just ... I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t made some of them.” I let out a self-deprecating little chuckle and added, “Plus I’m just in a mopey mood right now.”
Derpy nodded with the patient understanding that can only come from raising a teenager. “Nothing a muffin won’t fix.”
I almost said something stupid to that, but at the last second I reined my mouth in. Stupid, downtrodden, and mildly depressed moods don’t tend to lead to good judgement calls.
Derpy chuckled, making a reasonable but for once inaccurate guess about where my thoughts were going. “Not like that, Cloud Kicker. Mind—gutter—exit.” She gave me a hesitant little smack on the forehead. “You have what my mom calls a ‘cookie face’—it requires a cookie to get somepony talking about how they’re feeling. I just took the concept and … derpified it.”
I let out a short, humorless little bark of laughter. “Seems like I’m talking about what I’m feeling just fine without any muffins, wouldn’t you say?” Not that I was gonna complain if I got some baked goods out of the bargain.
I barely heard Derpy’s understanding but slightly miffed sigh. “Right now you’re moping about the fact that you’re moping. I can stay for that, but if there’s something you really want to talk about … I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
Okay, she had me there. “I’m just ... worn out by all this stuff, okay? Seems like I can’t go a single day without some new problem rearing its head. Even the good things just end up leading to more complications, like when I patched things up with Eepy.”
“It’s still progress.” Derpy shifted slightly. “I mean … it’s been over a decade, but you’ve finally mended things with her. You’re friends again—right?”
I’ve got enough experience dealing with ponies to know what Derpy was really asking there. Ever since Eepy and I patched up, we’d been spending pretty much all day together. Even without the flight training, there was a lot of lost time to make up for. But that meant a week of not spending time with Derpy. She might be just a bit worried that I was spending so much time with an ex-fillyfriend I’d just reconciled with.
Not that I could blame her for being concerned, considering how close Eepy and I came to banging. It didn’t help that our relationship had been a little rocky even before then. It was past time I did something about that. “Look, Derpy, we need to talk.”
I didn’t quite miss the gasp that Derpy tried to cut off, or how her pupils suddenly shrank. “Talk? Okay, um ... yeah. Let’s talk, then.”
Great, Derpy looked like she was on the verge of a panic attack. At least hanging out with Eepy so much had been good practice for dealing with scared, nervous ponies. “Derpy, things haven’t been going well with us for a while now, and ... look, there are some things I need to tell you that you probably aren’t going to be very happy about, but I need to be honest with you.”
“Li—” Derpy’s voice cracked, and she licked her lips and cleared her throat before trying again. “Like what?”
I took a deep breath, and tried to think of the most diplomatic way to tell my fillyfriend that I was in love with her and two other ponies. After a bit of pondering, I couldn’t really come up with much that would soften the blow. “I, look, me and Eepy are—”
“You want to go back to her.” She swallowed and turned away from me, idly watching her hoof dig out a small section of cloud. “I guess it’s been a long time coming, huh? I haven’t really done much to keep you lately, and...”
“What? No!” Oh Luna, that’s what I get for being a bit hesitant about spilling, now Derpy had gone and jumped to conclusions. I gave her a quick little nuzzle, trying to comfort her with something a bit more meaningful than words. “Derpy, it’s not like that, okay? I’m not dumping you for her.”
She eased up a bit as I nuzzled her, but she was still tense enough that her wing-hug felt forced. “I want to believe you, Cloudy, but—why did you take your sister to her if Alula’s sick? Whatever we’re going through, you know I wouldn’t hesitate to help. I do have some experience with fillyhood illnesses.”
Finally, an issue I knew how to answer without saying something that might make Derpy feel even worse than she already did. “It was a simple timing thing. Eepy showed up at my place a couple minutes after Mom dropped her off and, well...” I tried for a chuckle, but ended up sounding just a little forced. “She took one look at ‘Lula and went into nurture-mode. You wanna be the one to tell Eepy she that she can't take care of a sick filly when she’s like that?”
Derpy went just a little pale at that. Eepy might be all gentle and non-threatening most of the time, but once she starts getting all nurturing and protective, not even Celestia herself would stand in Eepy’s way. Hay, she’d actually gone and stolen Celestia’s pet when she thought it needed some nurturing. After a couple seconds Derpy rallied enough courage to answer. “I-I certainly know a bit more about taking care of fillies than she does!”
I shrugged and smiled, hoping I could keep the mood relatively lighthearted. “Feel free to go right up to her and try to take my baby sis out of her nurturing hooves. I'll be watching from a safe distance.”
Derpy let out an annoyed grumble and shuffled her wings, ending the contact she’d worked so hard to keep just a minute ago. “I'm glad you two made up, but—you know I'm here for you too, right? With experience? All you had to do was ask.”
“Of course I know that, Derpy.” I was a little amazed that Derpy was actually getting jealous over this. I guess it made sense that she’d feel a bit threatened, but normally Derpy’s just not the type of pony to go green with envy. “It's just ... well you know how assertive Eepy can get like when there's something she wants to nurture.”
Derpy shot a slightly nervous glance out the window. “Yeah, I’ve seen her in action. She's a very ... she takes her nurturing very seriously.”
“No kidding.” I couldn’t help laughing a bit at the memory. “She just kinda ... very nicely, gently and completely took over 'Lula's care without even asking my permission.”
That got a tiny little laugh from Derpy too, which was hopefully a good sign. “That ... sounds about right, actually.” Derpy tried to smile, but it was so obviously insincere that after a second or two she ducked her head down so I couldn’t see her face. “Fluttershy doesn't do things halfway when somepony needs help.”
So, Derpy was clearly not okay. Time to get to the bottom of this. “Derpy, does me fixing things with Eepy really bother you that much?”
Derpy closed her eyes, and very slowly nodded her head. “It's .. not right for me to feel that way about the two of you making up. I should be happy because it’s a good thing; it's been way too long since you two were able to even talk to each other. I’ve always hoped that the two of you would find a way to reconcile, but now that it’s actually happened...” Derpy trailed off and turned her head away, unable to bring herself to look at me.
“Hey.” When Derpy still wouldn’t look at me I reached and placed a hoof under her chin, and turned her face back towards me so I could look her in the eyes. “Look, Eepy and I were great together, but that was a long time ago. Things have changed.”
She hesitated for a couple seconds before she met my eyes. Her eyes seemed especially crooked right now—I’ve never been sure if that means something about her current mood or not. “Then why is somepony from our—” Derpy blinked in surprise, and hastily corrected herself. “Your family with her?”
I’ll admit that I was starting to get a bit annoyed by now. I’d already explained the situation to her, and now Derpy was not only continuing to rag me over getting bull-rushed by Eepy, but she was getting all possessive of ‘Lula too. Celestia knows I never would’ve gotten on her case about how she raised Dinky and Sparkler. “What, do you think I should’ve given Eepy a smack upside the head and maybe even kicked her out of my house when she was just trying to help? After the two of us just finished patching up?”
Derpy flinched, and her ears went back flat on her head. “No, that’s not what I—like I said, it was stupid. Forget I asked.”
“Look, Derpy...” I thought about trying to soften the blow, but there really wasn’t any point in dancing around the issue. “I love Eepy, and she loves me. That hasn't changed. She’s always gonna be special to me.” I put a hoof over her mouth to forestall whatever she was about to say. “But that doesn't mean I'm gonna toss you out on your plot. Eepy and I are gonna spend time together reconnecting, and that’s probably gonna involve taking a night to get some closure at some point, but we’re not hooking back up.”
Derpy let out a long, relieved breath. After a couple seconds of relaxing, she brushed my hoof off from her mouth and shot me an annoyed look. “Then what did you want to talk about?” she snapped at me. “'We need to talk' are four words that usually don't have a good ending. Is it just you making up with her, or something else?”
I groaned and applied hoof to face. Me and my big, stupid mouth. “Okay, that wasn't the best choice of words on my part. It's just ... we do need to talk. Things have been kinda messy for us, and it’s past time we sorted it out.”
“Yeah.” Derpy bit her lip and turned her head slightly. “I'd forgotten how cold that bed can be sometimes when it’s just me by myself.”
“I know what you mean.” Spending most of a week coming home to an empty bed every night wasn’t much fun. “Letting 'Lula snuggle up with me makes a pretty poor substitute.”
Derpy let out a snort. “If Dinky wasn’t visiting her grandparents I’d be trying the same thing. Hay, I might even have tried letting Sparkler in but she won't come near the bed anymore, diligence in doing laundry or no. I guess she is a little old to still be sleeping in bed with her mother anyway.”
Derpy scuffed a hoof along the floor, and hesitantly met my eyes. “Look, last time we talked I didn’t really get a chance to say it so ... I'm sorry about the mess at the hospital. You were right, that got way out of hoof. You'd think breaking up my own kids' fights would tell me when I'm being foalish.”
I gave her a quick little reassuring nuzzle. “Derpy, it's—it’s not okay, but I understand. You and Blossom were both under a lot of stress, and things just kinda blew up.”
Derpy sighed and shook her head. “They didn't just 'kind' of blow up, you were so fed up that you nearly walked away from both of us.” A slight tremble passed through Derpy’s body, and her voice came out a bit shaky. “I'm not gonna lie, that scared me. I like what we have. I—I love you, Cloud Kicker. I don't want that to change.”
“Me either,” I admitted. “Look, Derpy, about what I said: I didn't really ... I was just frustrated with the both of you. I admit I was pretty tempted to run off to Las Pegasus and take a crack at setting a new record for the largest orgy in Equestrian history, but I wouldn’t really throw everything we’ve got out just because you and Blossom are getting snippy with each other.” I took a deep breath, and got myself ready to say some words that I’d never expected to use again until recently. “I love you too.”
After a second of shocked silence, she beamed at me and let out a happy little squee. All the tension left her body, and she dropped her head onto my shoulder and contentedly leaned against me. After a minute of comfortable silence, a considerably nervous Derpy asked, “So...what did we need to talk about?
“Just...” I trailed off and gave vague wave of my hoof. “Trying to sort this whole big mess out before it gets any worse.” I’m not quite sure how it could get worse right now, but I wasn’t about to rule anything out.
Derpy gave me an encouraging nod, and if possible her smile got even wider. “Alright. Well, Blossom and I have tried to talk things out some while you’ve been busy ... we're not PFFs by any stretch, but I think we’re not going to be at each other’s throats again.” Derpy gave me a playful smack on the shoulder. “And no, we didn't seal it with a kiss, or a First Night Consummation. Sorry to ruin your fantasy.”
“Darn...” I hadn’t been seriously expecting something like that would happen, but you have to admit that my life would get a lot less complicated if the two of them decided they’d be okay with sharing a bed. “Still, the two of you getting along a bit better is good.” I mentally prepared myself for an unhappy fillyfriend. “Because ... well there's a bit of a complication.”
Derpy went stiff as a board, and after a couple seconds of painful silence gave an impatient wave of her hoof for me to continue. With considerable reluctance, I did. “The things is, Derpy, I'm ... not just in love with you.”
Derpy’s eyes went wide, and she very slowly removed her wing from around my back and stepped away from me. “Cloud Kicker, I think you need to explain exactly what you mean.”
Okay, at least she wasn’t screaming at me and trying to hit me or throw anything at me. That was a good sign. “It means about what you think it means.” I groaned and flopped onto my back, and my wings gave a couple quick twitches to turn the cloud into something comfortable. “I've ... kinda got a thing for Blossom too. She's been somepony special to me for a long time, and I'm just starting to figure out how special.”
Derpy’s face went carefully blank—I’m not sure if that’s because she was trying to keep a lid on her less than happy feelings about that particular revelation, or if I’d just hit her with so many bombshells that she wasn’t sure what to feel anymore. “So.” Something about the way Derpy said that single word sent a nervous shiver up my spine. “Blossomforth's not just somepony who's on your banging radar any more. I should’ve seen it coming, you’ve been holding her up on a pedestal for years.” Derpy fixed me with a piercing, slightly accusatory glare. “There are only a couple reasons you wouldn’t have dragged her into bed at some point after all this time. You obviously like her enough to be friends with her and she’s reasonably attractive and unattached, so it’s all down to which rules are involved. How 'special' is she to you? What we have?”
I tried to come up with an answer for how much Blossom meant to me, and drew a blank. “I don't—I'm not sure.” I sighed and pulled a tuft of cloud out of the floor so I had something to occupy my hooves while I tried to come up with a better answer. “I guess it’s kinda hard to know where we’d be romantically when we're just friends right now. What I can say is that I think the way I feel about her is one of the reasons Blossom and I never actually banged. I knew if we did, it would get serious.”
Derpy’s eyes narrowed and a very slight grimace appeared on her face. “From the way she’s acting now, I’d say it’s pretty clear you never could’ve just had a casual one-night stand with her. She wants you bad, bad enough to—well, you were there, you saw how far she would go.” Derpy’s voice turned harsh as she snapped out. “Thing is, she had her chance.”
“No, she didn't,” I confessed. “I never gave her one.” Sure, I might’ve danced around the subject a bit and maybe even subconsciously dropped a couple hints her way, but I’d never done anything serious about it. “I knew she had a thing for me, and instead of addressing the issue I just stuck my head in the clouds and hoped the whole problem would just go away on its own.”
Derpy’s shoulder slumped and her wings drooped down. “Oh. I, um...” She awkwardly pawed at the clouds as she tried to figure what exactly she was going to say. “I really don't know how to respond to that,” she finally admitted.
“It is what it is.” I could feel my face slipping into a stoically blank mask as I tried to keep my emotions under control. “You deserved to know the truth, Derpy.”
“Doesn't really make me feel better,” Derpy snapped at me. She closed her eyes and took a couple deep breaths, and continued a bit more calmly. “I ... put me in her horseshoes and I'd still be—well, not alone, but definitely wanting. And now that you've come around...” She took a couple more breaths, and then said with forced calm. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
“At least I got that part right,” I grumbled bitterly. “I really feathered this one up, didn't I?”
Derpy sighed and nodded. “Royally. I won’t say all of it is completely your fault, but your relationship with Blossomforth is something you should have sorted out a long time ago.” She dropped down next to me and gave my cheek an encouraging little nuzzle. “We'll find a way to fix this, okay? Together.”
I hesitantly wrapped a wing around her, and was a bit relieved when she didn’t try to shrug me off or anything. “Yeah. So, guess I better ... actually, I'm open to suggestions.”
Derpy snuggled up a little closer to me, and took a while to think it over before she answered. “I really wish I knew. I don’t have much experience with these sorts of relationships—all I really have to draw on is how things work with my girls, and that’s not exactly something you can apply to romance.”
I decided to offer the only good answer I’d been able to come up with, though I wasn’t very optimistic about how Derpy would take it. “So ... do we try sharing?’ I let out a very weak chuckle, and added, “It's not like it would be the first time I got around a bit.”
Derpy let an amused little snort. “You would suggest that.” She looked over at me and grinned, only for her smile to slowly fade away when I didn’t return it. “You — you’re not joking, are you?” I shook my head.
She spent a minute in very uncomfortable silence, before very carefully saying. “I don’t want anypony getting hurt, but I feel the way I feel about you. I don't think she'd tell you any differently. This ... trying to be with both of us at the same time is a bit different from your normal attitude. You're not just 'getting around' any more, you're splitting yourself. Emotional bifurcation like that isn't easy to adjust to when banging is involved.”
“It's not...” I trailed off as I realized that she had a point. There’s a big difference between banging around and trying to keep some kind of deep, meaningful relationship going with two different ponies. “I don't want to have to choose. I love both of you.”
Derpy reached up and brushed a hoof along one of my cheeks. “And I love you, and I don't want to lose that! And Blossomforth—I know she feels the same way.” She heaved out a sigh and ran a hoof over her face. “I don't know, I just don't know. I hope you—I hope we can find a way to make things right. Blossomforth and I don't get along right now, but I don't hate her. A broken heart isn’t something I'd wish on her.”
I rolled over onto my side so I could face Derpy directly. “I guess fixing this is gonna take a bit more than just spending half my time with you and half with her.”
Derpy’s mouth was halfway open to say something when she seemed to catch herself. When she finally spoke it was with careful, deliberate slowness. “If I were her, I wouldn't want these kinds of plans made without me. Much as I hate to say it...” Derpy sighed and very reluctantly conceded. “This is something all three of us are going to have to talk about.”
I couldn’t really argue with that, but at the same time putting those two into a room to talk things out wouldn’t work until we had some kind of baseline to work with. “Of course I’m going to talk to Blossom about all this too, and we are all going to need to sit down to work out some kind of final solution, but right now we need to settle where things stand with us.” No point in bringing up sharing with Blossom if Derpy wouldn’t go for it.
“Okay.” Derpy nodded half to herself, as if confirming something in her own mind. “I want you here, with me and my girls. That's the 'us' I want.” She gently put a hoof on my lips to forestall any answer, and her eyes teared up. “I know, I know, it's selfish, but see it from my perspective: I've been alone since Dinky came, and now that I finally found somepony...”
I winced and let out a long sigh. “So ... sharing's a no-go for you then?”
Derpy gave a rueful shake of her head.
“Super,” I growled. “There goes my only real plan for not breaking somepony's heart.”
Derpy flinched and her ears went back flat on her head. “I don't like it either, it's...” She let out a sad, frustrated little sigh.
I could feel anger and frustration starting to boil up inside my chest. “So I might end up having to pick one of you. That's great. That's just fea—” I cut myself off before I could completely blow my top, and took a couple deep breaths to calm down.
Derpy reached out as if she was going to put a hoof on my shoulder but stopped halfway and ducked her head with a guilty little whimper. “I'm sorry, Cloud Kicker.”
I let out a miserable little grumble and waved her off. “Can’t change how you feel, Derpy. I’ll have to talk to her about it, but honestly I can’t see Blossom going along with sharing either.”
Derpy gave me a paper-thin smile. “No, probably not. So, that's a 'no' from both of us ... sour grapes and all, but it still isn't fair to you.”
I sighed and rubbed a hoof over my forehead. “So ... I guess...” Oh Celestia, how was I supposed to make a choice like this? Figures, I finally go and fall in love again, and I end up having to break somepony’s heart the next day.
My fillyfriend sighed and uncomfortably pawed at a loose tuft of cloud. “I wish there was a better way to handle this, I really do. You're...” She let out a short little laugh that was devoid of any mirth. “Cloud Kicker's too loving for her own good.”
“Yeah.” That might’ve been funny if it didn’t hurt so much.
Derpy let out another tremble, and spoke in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “What happens if you do have to pick one of us?
I sighed, and thought the problem over until I hit the only answer. “I guess ... there's really only one choice I could make. I don't want to, I really don't, but if I had to pick one of you...” Derpy let out an audible gulp, and was clearly struggling to keep her own emotions in check. Oh Luna, I was making this some big painful drawn-out drama production. “I love you both, but if I do end up having to pick, I guess I would have to pick the pony I'm already with.”
Derpy’s mouth opened and closed several times as she tried to think of something to say, until she finally settled for wrapping her hooves around me and squeezing with everything she had. “Th-thank you, Cloud Kicker! I—” She let out a sob of joy and buried her head in my chest. “I love you, I love you so much.”
I tried to hug her back and match her enthusiasm, but I wasn’t feeling very happy at all right now. “Love you too, Derpy.”
Derpy sobbed into my chest for a minute or so, struggling to regain her composure. Luna, what had I done to her to get into this state? She wiped the worst of her tears off against my coat, though when she spoke her voice was still pretty shaky. “I'm s-sorry to put you in th-this position, but...” The forelegs around my chest tightened enough to make my ribs creak as she cried out. “Thank you thank you, thank you!”
“Yeah, sure.” It was kinda hard to share Derpy’s joy in the moment when all I could think about was how crushed Blossom was gonna be if I couldn't steer this thing away from where it was heading and had to give her the bad news. She’d been holding a torch for me for so long, and the thought that I might end up shooting her down for good just when she was starting to think she might have a chance. Well, if things didn’t work out with Derpy maybe we could ... no, telling her something like that would just make it worse.
I guess Derpy must have figured out what was going through my head, because her good mood slowly evaporated, and she gave an awkward little cough. “You’re thinking about Blossomforth, aren’t you? I...” Derpy let out a guilty sigh. “I really don't want to hurt her, I swear.”
“Not like that would stop you.” I slapped my hooves over my mouth a second too late to stop that bitter little snipe from getting out. “Sorry, I ... sorry.”
Derpy flinched and pulled back from me, refusing to meet my eyes. After several long moments, she whispered. “I don't want to, Cloud Kicker. Change things a little and that would be me happily flitting along to training, without a clue my heart's about to be shattered. Changes things a little more...” She trailed off with a sigh.
“Yeah, I know.” I carefully reached out and put a hoof on her shoulder. “It wasn’t fair of me to take it out on you, but I just...”
Derpy gave my hoof a nuzzle and sighed. “If she's that important to you...” Her mouth was stopped halfway to whatever she was about to say next.
“I love her,” I answered simply. “Just like I do you.”
Derpy let out a guilty little whine, then turned back around and slowly wrapped herself around me. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I groaned and wrapped my hooves around her, resting my chin on top of her head.. “I ... Derpy? Look, asking me to make a choice like that, even just as a worst-case-scenario thing ... that really hurt, okay?”
I felt Derpy’s head rub against my chest. “I'm sorry for that, I really, really am. I wish I could’ve ... I’m sorry. I just...” I could feel fresh wet spots on my chest fur—she must be crying. “I’m so sick of waking up every day and wondering if this is the day you’re going to tell me that you don’t need me anymore because you have Fluttershy back, or you’d rather have Blossomforth.”
I tried to give her a comforting little nuzzle, but I was still stinging a bit too much to put my whole heart into it. “Derpy, no matter what happens, I’m never gonna just throw you away like that. That’s a promise.”
“Thank you.” Derpy and I just stood there, her head resting on my chest as I held her. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you? Anything at all?”
I slowly ran a hoof up and down her back while I tried to figure out what to say next. “Just try to understand if I need a little space sometimes, okay? It’s gonna take a bit for this to stop hurting.”
I could hear a hint of pain in Derpy’s voice, though she tried to hide it. “I understand.”
I tightened my hold on her just a bit, and very quietly asked. “Derpy? Can we just stay like this for a bit?”
Derpy slowly wrapped her wings around me and started very gently rocking me. It felt relaxing, almost maternal in a way. I guess it was probably something she’d learned to do for her girls when they were feeling bad. “I’ll be here for you as long as you need me. Thank you, Cloud Kicker. I love you. We'll—we'll get through this, okay?
I slowly let myself relax and accept the simple comfort she offered. “Yeah. Thanks, Derpy.”
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Blossom before the next day, but that was probably for the best. With Tornado Duty staring us in the face, the last thing she needed was a big relationship drama bomb to distract her. Blossom’s just not the kind of pony who can compartmentalize and put her personal problems aside in order to get the job done. The way she’d reacted to our initial falling out made that pretty clear.
We started assembling at sunrise. For the final confrontation. It was going to be epic. Very epic.
Appropriately, the day started with pancakes. Derpy’s muffin pancakes, to be specific. They’re ... kinda hard to explain to somepony who’s never seen them, but what matters is that they’re absolutely delicious.
Anyway, after I had some food in my stomach the two of us went out to the highland reservoir. I had to show up a little early to help get everything ready—which turned out to mostly consist of getting Twilight’s huge anemometer set up. I was just a bit annoyed by Blossom’s absence during all that, mostly because she probably would’ve been much better at helping put everything on the giant-sized anemometer together. I knew enough about basic weather engineering to know how to make a simple anemometer, but Twilight’s giant machine was the opposite of simple.
Ponyville’s entire pegasus population had started showing up by the time I was done helping her attach the primary whatsit to the secondary thingamajig. Normally Blossom and I were on roll-call duty, but she was still AWOL. I was a little worried about her—it did seem like she was coming down with something a couple days ago. I hoped it wasn’t anything serious, though if it was bad enough to keep her home on a day like today...
“Rainbow, we have a problem.” Rainbow Dash sighed and braced herself for the bad news. “It’s time for roll call, and Blossom hasn’t shown up yet.” With as many pegasi as we had on our hooves, getting a headcount would take a long time if I was doing it all by myself. I guess I could ask Raindrops to help out, since Blossom did make her a temporary assistant manager, but...
Twilight interrupted that train of thought with a loud and authoritative cry of, “Spike!” Her pet dragon dutifully trotted up, a list clutched in his claws. “Help Cloud Kicker handle the roll call.” She shot me a quick smile and added, “It’s the least I can do after you helped out with the anemometer.”
Roll call is one of those boring but necessary tasks that happens with any big project. Especially with something like this, where every single pegasus was making an important contribution. Not to mention that skipping out on Tornado Duty could get a pony slapped with a hundred bit fine if you didn’t have a good reason for missing it. One of those little downsides of being born with wings, weather work was a civic duty.
We started down the line. “Raindrops?”
“Here.”
“Silverspeed?”
“Right here.”
“Flitter and Cloudchaser?” I should technically have called them separately, but the twins were practically joined at the hip.
Sure enough, I heard two simultaneous calls of, “Here.”
“Wild Fire?” Distinctly ominous silence followed. “Wild Fire?”
Right, so we had a missing pony. Annoying, but that kind of thing happens. “Spring Wind?” Again, nopony answered. “Spring Wind?”
On to the next name. “Sunny Skies? Anypony seen Sunny Skies?”
A third pony in a row that wasn’t here ... okay, we officially had a problem.
By the time I got back with the final numbers, things were looking grim: we were missing a lot of pegasi, and I’d gotten several reports that our absentees seemed to be coming down with something a couple days back. Then the real bad news came when I got back to Rainbow Dash—the Ponyville weather squad had been hit by the Feather Flu.
Thank Celestia my lifestyle encourages me to keep up with all my vaccinations. Feather Flu is one of the nastiest seasonal bugs out there—the disease itself wasn’t much worse than the normal flu, but the reason it’s called the ‘feather’ flu is because it also forces pegasi into an early molt. Losing perfectly healthy feathers can get nasty fast—Thunderlane was already in the hospital from complications after he dropped some blood feathers.
My wings gave a sympathetic little twinge at that. Anything going wrong with your blood feathers was not fun. If you damage those growing feathers that still have blood vessels and stuff in them, the only real way to fix it is yank the feather as fast as possible—feathers don’t exactly clot very well compared to skin. Make a mess of it and it’s easy to lose more blood than you can afford to.
Even when there weren’t any nasty complications, a forced molt means a week of being grounded and stuffing your face while you grew all those feathers back. Not a fun experience. To be honest, I was just a little tempted to ask Rainbow to put Tornado Day on hold for long enough to check up on Blossom. Duty comes first, though.
Though duty might have been a moot point, since after Twilight crunched the numbers it was bad enough that we might not be able to pull off the tornado at all. There was just one problem with that ... Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow took a look at Twilight’s abacus and quickly double-checked her math. “Yeah, it looks pretty bad, but we can still pull it off. Right, Twilight?”
Twilight frowned over at the large and yet entirely too small collection of pegasi. “It’s not very likely, but theoretically if everypony hits their highest performance numbers from training and can sustain those numbers for long enough it might be possible.”
Rainbow Dash being the pony she was, her brain apparently edited out all the conditionals in Twilight’s statement so that she ended up with the answer she wanted. “Alright, we can still pull it off if everypony gives a hundred percent.” She flew up to address the crowd. “Okay everypony! Let’s give it all we’ve got! On the sound of the horn, we take off!”
After Ponyville’s resident baby dragon gave the signal, we were off. Things started off well enough—with Rainbow Dash pulling her usual morale officer routine, everypony was putting everything they could into the tornado. It was way too loud inside the funnel to actually make out Twilight’s running count of our wingpower numbers, but I knew we were getting close when I could see the water starting to build up.
Shooting a look down at the reservoir was probably a mistake, since it meant I wasn’t looking at the pony in front of me for a couple seconds. Naturally, it was during those seconds that Raindrops’ wings gave out, and next thing I knew a wall of yellow and aquamarine slammed into my face.
By the time I regained my bearings I was on the ground and thoroughly entangled with poor Dropsy. Not that I was going to complain too much about the fact that my head was currently resting on a very nicely-sculpted flank. From what I could feel, Raindrops wasn’t exactly getting a bad deal either. “Hey, Dropsy, as much fun as we had on that little side trip we took while retrieving the southern birds, this really isn’t a good time.”
“Cloud Kicker.” Raindrops shifted around a bit in effort to disentangle herself from me. “Get. Off. Now.”
“Move your right hoof a little bit further south, and we can work on that.” I couldn’t see her face well enough to be absolutely sure, but I had enough experience with Raindrops to know that she was probably glaring at me. “Look, I’m not in the best of positions to return the favor right now, but if you shift your hindquarters around some maybe I can—”
“Cloud Kicker...” Okay, Raindrops was going from annoyed to bordering on losing her temper. Time to rein in my sense of humor. It took a little work, but the two of us managed to disentangle ourselves without too much trouble, especially once Derpy spotted my predicament and trotted over to lend a hoof.
Derpy’s motives might not have been entirely altruistic though, judging by the smirk she was giving Raindrops. “So that’s where you two vanished to last Winter Wrap-up! And after Rainbow sent you with me so I wouldn’t end up going north looking for the southern birds again ... shame on you both.” The smile on her face took any bite out of the condemnation. “What was it Rainbow said when she picked you, Raindrops? Something about needing a pony she could count on to not be distracted by Cloud Kicker?”
Raindrops actually blushed a little bit as she ducked her head and halfheartedly grumbled that nothing had happened. Nopony was convinced, especially not me since I was there for it. One thing I will say, once you got past the grouchy and serious exterior she was a pretty nice pony. Darn good bang too—she’s got a lot of muscle mass for a pegasus and she knows how to use it.
There was no time for basking in fond memories though—thankfully the tornado falling apart hadn’t caused too much damage to anypony. There were more than enough bumps and bruises to go around, but that was the worst of it. Unfortunately that wasn’t quite as good of news as it could have been, since it meant that everypony was still flight-capable.
Rainbow took one look at the situation, and came to exactly the conclusion you’d expect from her. “We’ve got to try again!” I groaned and applied hoof to face—Rainbow Dash never knew when to quit. Twilight beat me to the punch on making all the sensible arguments: We hadn’t managed to pull it off when everypony was fresh and ready to go, and now that we had a lot of tired and sore ponies on our hooves it could only get worse. Then there was the fact that it was lucky nopony got seriously hurt when the funnel broke up the first time around—we might not be so lucky if we went for a second attempt, especially with a lot of ponies not at a hundred percent anymore.
Not that logic and reason had any effect on her. Twilight made her case, and Rainbow brushed her off and did the most dangerous thing she could’ve possibly done. She started talking. “No! We’re going one more time! I’ve gotta know we gave it our all, and if I go down, I’m going down flying! C’mon ponies, let’s make this happen!”
It was completely insane. Common sense said that there was no way Rainbow’s plan should work—the numbers just didn’t add up. I saw Twilight shooting a look my way, and I could take a guess at what she was thinking. I could shut Rainbow down if I really wanted to—it’d be messy, but I’d be within my rights to challenge her on this. She was making a completely irrational decision that put ponies at risk of injury, or worse, chasing a plan that simply couldn’t work. The smart thing to do, the responsible thing to do would be to put a stop to this.
Except ... I believed in Rainbow Dash.
Faith can be a crazy thing like that. Rainbow wasn’t some goddess or even some kind of honored ancestor, she was just a normal pony with (if I’m being honest) some pretty big character flaws. She was suggesting a crazy plan that math and common sense said she just couldn’t do, but since when has Rainbow let something like that stop her?
Our friendship had gone through all kinds of hell, not just over the past few days, but for a pretty big chunk of our lives. I’d spent a couple years hating her guts after Flight Camp, and there had been plenty of times when things had gotten rocky on us. Despite all that ... I believed in her.
I believed that she just might be able to pull this off after all.
We all took back to the air with a little extra something pushing us. So we couldn’t pull it off when everyone gave a hundred percent? Well then—I know it sounds horribly cheesy to say it, but we would just have to give more than a hundred percent. Rainbow ... kinda has that effect on ponies.
We were getting close now, I could see the water starting to build up in the funnel, but we needed a little bit more. One last push—I still couldn’t hear Twilight’s running wingpower call, but I was dead certain it had to be something in the seven-nineties. I tried to put out one last little burst of speed, something to put us over the edge, but there just wasn’t enough left—even pushing as hard as I could, I had my limits.
And that’s when the most unlikely savior imaginable appeared. “Eepy?” I don’t think I’d ever seen her fly like that before. Fast. Powerful. Fearless.
Dammit, this was not a good time to start thinking about how hot seeing her like that made me.
Eepy gave us the final push we needed, enough to go from almost there to done. I felt the change in the tornado, the way the air currents shifted when we finally pulled it off. Sure enough, a quick glance to the side showed us the water shooting up through the funnel, and a minute later I heard Spike blowing the horn again, letting us know that the job was done.
Rainbow beat me to hugging Eepy first, but I didn’t leave her waiting long. “Eepy, that was amazing! Incredible!” From the slight blush that little bit of praise left, I decided to leave off mentioning that it was also sexy as hell. At least, I’d save that for some time when we weren’t in front of a hundred witnesses. One thing’s for sure—Derpy and I might be a settled thing, but there was no way in Tartarus I was letting Eepy slip out of my life again. She might not be my special somepony anymore, but she was still one hay of a special pony.
It took Blossom a while to answer her door. To be honest I probably shouldn’t have bothered knocking and making her get up out of bed, but I wasn’t comfortable just barging in uninvited.
Blossom looked ... about as unsexy as I’ve ever seen her. Her mane was limp and unkempt, her eyes were half-focused and bloodshot, her fur was cowlicked from being in bed most of the day, I could smell the faint odor of over-the-counter medicines on her breath, and her feathers were a complete mess with way too many of them in the process of molting. That’s the nastiest thing about the feather flu—having perfectly good feathers start molting will ruin anypony’s day.
Despite her obviously miserable state, she still smiled when she saw me. “Cloud Kicker. Hey. How’d the tornado go?”
“We did it.” I stepped into her house and idly shuffled some cloud around to freshen things up a bit. No major remodelling or anything, but simple stuff like bumping up airflow a bit and rotating all the clouds. Houses with sick ponies tend to acquire a kind of ... sick and medicine-y smell to them, but rotating all the clouds will freshen things right up. You’d be surprised how much of a difference things smelling nice and fresh can make—I guess it’s because that whole sick house aura is pretty dang depressing.
“Cool,” she rasped, settling back down onto a comfortable patch of cloud. “The boss take the whole thing about not breaking the record okay?”
“Yeah—she wasn’t happy about it, but she knew what her priorities were.” I settled down next to her and fluffed up the cloud around her some. “Getting the job done was more important than setting a record, and with how many sick ponies we had just pulling off the tornado at all was a pretty big deal. Good enough to get Rainbow a compliment from Spitfire after everything was done.” I chuckled and leaned back against the wall next to her. “You should’ve seen the look on Rainbow’s face when the captain of the Wonderbolts started congratulating her on having a lot of guts. I thought she was about to start squeeing right then and there.”
Blossom shivered a little bit and pulled some of the cloud around her. “Great, not like her ego’s big enough or anything.” She smirked and knowingly shook her head as she covered a particularly large bald patch on her left wing. “Seriously, though, that’s good. She came pretty close to not being able to pull this off at all.”
“Yeah, we cut things real close.” I grabbed a relatively fresh clump of cloud and used it to wipe away some of the accumulated sweat, medicine-y smell, and general sickness funk Blossom’s body was currently radiating. “Twilight kept saying that with the way the numbers looked it was just about impossible for us to pull it off, but you know Rainbow ... if it’s not completely impossible, she’ll try. No, actually, she’d try even if it was.” I let out an amused little snort. “Probably still find a way to pull it off too. Crazy mare.”
“And she gives some crazy motivational speech if she cah—ca—” She was interrupted by a string of dry coughs, and took a sip from a nearby bottle of apple juice before trying again. “If she can’t make the facts line up with what she wants to see.” She idly craned her head to one side as I dabbed at her jawline. “So how close did we cut it? Close enough for one of her Rainbow Chats?”
“Oh hay yes.” Blossom closed her eyes as I ran the cloud over her face. Once that was done I had to toss that clump out, and go get a fresh one. One advantage of just finishing up Tornado Day—there was no shortage of fresh cloud to work with. “It was an amazing speech. Epic. I’m surprised Pinkie Pie didn’t pop out of somewhere to jump her bones, because Rainbow was at her best right then. I guess she was too busy planning the big party to celebrate our success.”
“Probably, knowing her. If you’re going, do me a favor and bring back a slice of cake. I could use some to wash down all this stuff.” She waved a hoof at a steel container holding a bunch of different medicines from her bathroom cabinet.
“Um...” I rubbed a hoof on the back of my head and let out a slightly sheepish chuckle. “Party’s already going on, Blossom.” I moved the cloud down to start washing along the base of one of her wings, taking care to use as delicate a touch as I could manage. The last thing I wanted to do was mess around with her wings and cause her pain or discomfort.
“Oh.” She looked at me, then took a sudden interest in her apple juice. She raised her wing a little bit, exposing a patch of skin where her scapular feathers used to be. “Um... I’d’ve been okay for a bit, you know.”
I shrugged and very gently cleaned the exposed skin. “Priorities, Blossom. With Pinkie Pie around there will always be plenty of other parties.”
She grunted and gave a small nod, half-watching me out of the corner of her eyes. If it weren’t for the fever that was a part of the Feather Flu package, I’d’ve worried that the slight shiver I felt was from me being so close to her wing. She either felt the same way or was just too sick to think about anything else, and curled her wing a little more out of my way.
I tried to finish washing the area as quickly as I could without going too fast, and moved on to safer territory. “Besides ... I didn’t really know how sick you were. I was worried, especially after I heard Thunderlane was in the hospital. Complications with some of his blood feathers.”
“Thunderlane’s where?” her ears perked, and I could see a tiny bit of alarm in her blue eyes. “Is he okay?”
“I didn’t stop to ask for details, but if they got him to the hospital and his brother turned out for Tornado Day, he’s probably fine.” Admittedly, about the only medical knowledge I’ve got is some basic combat medical training—how to patch yourself up enough to get to a field hospital and stuff. On the other hoof, dealing with blood feathers is just part of being a pegasi, and it’s an easy guess that complications probably meant bleeding ... lots of it. Not fun at all, but that’s the kind of thing they could fix pretty reliably if you got to the hospital in time.
I carefully looked over her wing, drawing a tiny little whine of protest from her. I guess I’m not surprised she didn’t like the idea of me seeing her wings in their current state, but her pride took a backseat to her health. The inspection went reasonably well, but not perfectly. “Blossom, you’ve got a blood feather that’s in bad shape. Probably best if we take it out now.” Getting bad blood feathers out is a pretty simple process when you’ve got some medical supplies and somepony there to help—the trouble usually comes when a pony tries to handle it themselves, especially a pony who’s already sick.
“Mmm.” She didn’t offer much more beyond a grumble as she extended her wing in front of me. Blood feathers hurt when they came out wrong, but I think hearing that one of our co-workers had been hospitalized was enough to undermine any protest. “All right, go ahead and get it.”
“Right, I’ll try to make it quick.” Fortunately Blossom had the foresight to add the standard feather maintenance stuff to her medicine tin, so I had everything I needed to take out a damaged blood feather right at hoof. The process itself was pretty simple, just very tricky to pull off on your own. The angle is tricky, especially when the flu has you feeling awful to begin with, and most ponies tend to panic a bit at the sight of their own blood. If I had to guess, trying to take care of the problem himself was probably what landed Thunderlane in the hospital.
After I got the gauze and some coagulant out and ready, I leaned down to gently grasp the base of her feather in my teeth, and then quickly and smoothly yanked it out. I got the gauze onto the wound as fast as I could, before she lost any significant amount of blood. Blossom was a real trooper about the whole thing—she barely even let out a whimper during the entire process.
“...ow.” She turned her head and examined her wing, looking over the same patch several times in a row before giving up with a cough. “Please tell me that’s the only one.”
I went back to examining Blossom’s wings, and gave a sympathetic flinch. “You’ve got three more that don’t look so great. Can’t be sure anything will go wrong with them, but it’s probably safer to take them out than risk one of them breaking on you when you don’t have somepony here to fix it up for you.”
“Horsefeathers.” We both snorted at the ironic appropriateness of the turn of phrase. “This is gonna suck... lemme grab a bit more to drink first, I don’t think I’m gonna want to move after.”
I gave another sympathetic wince and nodded. “You’ll probably wanna take it easy for a bit after we’re done.” Normally losing a blood feather isn’t the worst thing in the world, but when you’re sick on top of that it makes just everything hurt twice as much. “I’ll stick around until you’re feeling mobile again. Although ... I gotta say, feather flu in a cloud-house you live in by yourself is a bad combination, Blossom.”
Blossom shuffled off the clouds around her and trotted to her ice-cloud, grabbing a couple bottles of apple juice before hurrying back. The whole trip took about thirty seconds, but by the time she settled back into her little nook she was shivering again. “Yeah, it’s kind of a hazard of not living groundside.” She buried herself again up to the shoulder and re-extended her wings. “And, um … thanks.”
I let out a humorless little chuckle. “You’re probably not gonna be thanking me in a bit.”
A couple minutes later, the blood feathers were out. Blossom’s grimace faded into merely keeping her eyes shut for a minute as she fought back a few pained tears. I’d tried to be as quick about the whole process as I could, but even slightly damaged blood feathers were still connected to nerve endings, as well as her bloodstream. I hated seeing her in pain, especially pain I was causing, but rushing things could cause all kinds of problems.
Once it was done and the worst of Blossom’s whimpers and tears died down, I brought my patch of cloud to wipe her face again, cleaning away the tear lines. “Blossom? You okay? I’m sorry that hurt so much.”
She nodded after a moment’s pause. “Luna, I hate this bug.” She folded one wing back against her side, but hissed as she moved the other one. I didn’t blame her, two of the three feathers had come out near the joint. She let it flop next to her and dug it into the cloud. “That’s … better than needing Life Flight to cart me out of here, I guess.”
“I suppose,” I answered neutrally. To be honest, I’ve never quite understood why some ponies have so many issues with going to the hospital. Maybe that’s just because of the way the clan raised me though—one lesson we learned real early was to take anything worse than a papercut to a medic, just to be safe. There’s plenty of stories out there of ponies getting themselves in serious trouble because they had a minor bug or a little flesh wound that went bad on them because they didn’t get medical help when they needed it.
I briefly considered dragging Blossom to the hospital over her protests, but in her current state she could hurt herself if she made a big fuss about going to the hospital. That’s not to mention that there are probably rules about treating patients who don’t want to be treated. Well, as long as those patients are reasonably lucid and coherent, instead of screaming and flailing about like mad to the point where they’re a danger to themselves and others.
So dragging her the hospital was out ... but it did make for an effective lever to get something a bit more realistic. “Look, Blossom, staying up here by yourself in your current state really isn’t safe. Now, the way I see it we have two options—either I take you back to my place, or I take you to the hospital.”
“So that’s what it...” her mumble was cut off by another cough. “I was gonna ask to borrow a blanket anyway. Fine, let’s go to your place, I guess. M’not a huge fan of hospitals if I don’t need to be there.” She stood up and let out a soft gasp as the cool air rushed around her. Her hoof tapped the container which held her ruined feathers. “P-probably should’ve gone down first, huh?”
“Probably,” I agreed. “You’re lucky I’m up-to-date on all my vaccines.” This did mean Eepy was gonna be holding onto ‘Lula for a bit longer though—I don’t know if either of them had gotten their feather flu shots, and the last thing ‘Lula needed was to catch the feather flu on top of what she already had. I guess my little bachelorette pad was gonna be a plague house for a bit.
I let my hooves sink down into Blossom’s floor, until I was at a level where she wouldn’t have any trouble getting on my back. “You gonna be able to climb on and get a good grip, or do you need me to just come up under you?”
Blossom lifted a foreleg, then put it back down again, unconsciously shuffling her wings only to hiss again when she tried to fold the tender joint. “Would you mind?” she asked with a sheepish grin. “I’m really not feeling too hot after that.”
“No problem.” It was fairly easy to just sink a little lower into her floor, walk underneath her, and then come back up so she was more or less draped over my back. “Try to get a good grip, and keep clear of my wings. I’ll take things as slow and careful as I can.” Blossom was just about settled into position when her body went a bit off-kilter and her hind leg dropped over my right wing. After giving her a couple seconds to correct the problem on her own, I spoke up. “Nono, you gotta shift so you’re centered.”
Blossom shifted around to a position that was less bad than where she had been, but still pretty far from ideal. “Sorry, I’ve never done this before.”
Huh, so she’d never mounted anypony before. Big surprise. “Look on the bright side, you’re finally getting to ride me.” That actually got a very weak laugh out of her—she must be really sick if she thought that was a good joke. “So, you’ve really never ridden on somepony’s back?”
“No.”
Really? I mean, that’s a pretty basic part of childhood for anypony, especially a pegasus. My parents were pretty light on affection, and even they’d taken me out for flights on their backs every once in a while. It was one of the standard things parents did with their ... oh. Right.
“Okay Blossom, here’s what you need to do...” After a couple minutes I had her reasonably well placed, but just to be safe I grabbed a chunk of Blossom’s floor and whipped it into a very basic harness for her. It wasn’t much, but it would keep her in position long enough for the flight down.
Thankfully nothing went wrong on the way down, and since every healthy pegasus in Ponyville was packed into Sugarcube Corner for the big post-Tornado party I didn’t even have to worry about running around town with a contagious mare on my back. Once I got her settled in I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a quick note on it, then stuck it on my front door. Odds were all the healthy pegasi would be flocking to the clinic to get feather flu shots now that everypony knew it was going around, but it was still best to warn folks that I had a sick pegasus here. No sense taking chances.
Once that was done, I checked back in on my patient. Blossom was already making herself comfortable in my bed, though she seemed just a bit frustrated by the fact that my mattress and pillows were a bit too solid compared to what she was used to. “Blossom, you need anything?”
“Could I bug you for a glass of water? Coughing’s left me a little sore.” Blossom’s voice did sound a bit scratchy.
“Yeah, no problem.” I trotted off to the kitchen and got her some water, and even helped her hold the glass until she’d had her fill. “So ... I guess I need to break out that nurse outfit, huh?”
“Of course you’d have one on hoof.” Even through her laugh, I didn’t miss the intrigued gleam in her eyes.
“It was a Nightmare Night costume,” I offered in my own defense. Admittedly, I did hang onto those costumes for the one or two times when they came in handy for ... other contexts. Even the Sexy Royal Guard outfit I’d made from my old cadet armor had seen a couple interesting uses over the years.
“So that’s why Redheart was giving you the evil eye the next day.” She had largely stopped shivering and snuggled a little more securely into the layers of blankets. “Bet it looks nice.”
I couldn’t help chuckling a bit. “Maybe I can put it on for you later.” I hesitated for a moment, then leaned down to give her a quick little nuzzle. I probably shouldn’t be showing her this kind of physical affection until I let her know what Derpy made me ... what Derpy and I had worked out, but it’s not like I could break the news to her now.
The heat from her cheek traced against mine as she nuzzled me back. “Cloudy... Thanks. I owe you.”
“No problem,” I whispered to her. “S’what I do for ponies I love.” It took a second for my brain to process what I’d just said. That ... probably could’ve been handled better.
A soft smile formed on Blossom’s lips, and she slowly brought her head up to mine. I had plenty of time to stop it if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t stop her.
By most objective standards, it wasn’t much of a kiss. Even if lack of experience wasn’t an issue, Blossom was way too sick to manage anything amazingly romantic or sensual that could knock a pony off her hooves. It wasn’t quite down to the level of a simple little peck though, and somehow that brief little kiss carried a meaning. A promise of kisses to come, that would be a hundred times better.
Blossom settled her head onto my pillow and let out a contented little sigh. As she started fading to sleep I heard her whisper back: “I love you too, Cloud Kicker.”
Okay ... I definitely could’ve handled that better.