~Spike~
Start with the basics, that made perfect sense. Of course, it would have been better if I had known what the basics were. It likely wasn't going to be anything that I couldn't do, that would ruin the concept of them being the basics. I turned around, looked at Rainbow with a confused look, and she smirked as she looked back.
I was more than a little concerned.
"First thing's first, we need to figure out how strong those wings of yours are." I wondered how this was going to work, but it quickly seemed like that wouldn’t come up yet. Rainbow looked up for a few moments before she looked back down at me. "Wait, no, this is something new for you. I need to make sure that you know how to move your wings at all."
That made perfect sense, I guessed. It wouldn't matter how strong they were if I couldn't get them to move at all. But how was I going to figure it out beyond moving them myself? And if I couldn't think of how, what did that mean. I tried too concentrate on trying to make the new apendages on my back move at all, but they were fighting back in a completely expected way.
They were doing nothing.
"Ah come on!" If that didn't make it obvious that I was frustrated, nothing would. The response that I got was less than great, chuckling as my wings refuses to do anything. "I'm sure you did this perfectly your first time." I snapped, not thinking about the fact that she probably did this first as a foal.
"Well, yeah, of course I did." Another thing that I had forgotten was that she was almost as sarcastic as I was. "But you're probably just thinking about it too much. I mean, it's like moving a leg." I barely noticed that she had gotten closer, until she touched my wing again. "Here, this should help." With that, she started to move my wing as if it was being flapped. That was the type movement that I was going to make, if I could ever get it to do anything at all.
"New muscle, just have to get a feel for it."
Another five minutes passed, and the wing just kept flapping. It felt kind of weird, but at some point it just became something that was happening. I hadn't even noticed that she had stopped forcing it, and it had instead become me. Only when she stepped in front of me, and put her hoof on my shoulder, did I suddenly stop.
"See? I knew you could do it."
It seemed my reward was a kiss on the cheek.
"Now that you can do that, let's just see you fly." That seemed like a fairly obvious thing, I just had to start flapping both wings until I started to move up from the floor. It was actually just as simple as I thought it would be, though the sheer exertion that I had to put into it was more than I expected. Part of me wondered if there was some sort of reason why pegasi flew so much if this was the case.
"Good, good, now I'm going to see if you can actually fly anywhere. Follow me!"
She didn't seem too understand that this might have been difficult for me, or maybe she just believed I could do it anyway. Either way, the window was soon open and I was haphazardly following behind her. It was obvious that she was going slower, just to make sure that I could keep up. The one thing she didn't seem to be cutting down on, though, was how high she was going. Ponyville was blurry from where we were, yet at the same time I was mainly looking at the sky around me.
"It's so nice up here."
"Okay Fluttershy." No matter what, I knew she would never stop teasing ponies. She probably also wouldn't stop teasing me sometimes. "It is pretty nice, though. And it gets even better when you figure out how to do things with clouds..." That was something that I was definitely looking forward to doing, but something told me that it was going to make everything else seem like a simple exercise. I didn’t know why, but just something about shaping clouds seemed difficult.
That was what she had to be talking about, right?
"Alright, we're going to test your stamina. For the next three hours, I'm going to need you to just hover above this cloud." I didn't know what to say, that seemed like a weird idea. It did make sense from the idea that this would be something that would help out with my stamina. Not only that, but I got the impression that this would help make sure that I got into the habit of actually flying. I had seen Rainbow do this sort of thing before, though not for a few hours.
Less than a minute after I started hovering over the cloud, Rainbow started to chuckle. "You're too cute, you know that? Never change." I didn't know what to say to that, but a quick hug took away the need for me to say anything. "As fun as it would have been to see if you could do that, we're going to do some more exciting things." I noticed a grin on her face, and a strange look in her eyes.
Part of me was worried.
By the time an hour had passed, my wings were starting to hurt. Maybe there was something about the fact that I weighed more than her, but it wasn't easy doing a lot of the things she did. The loopty-loop was easy enough, but most of the things she wanted me to do took precise turning. More than once, I actually slammed into her.
That hadn't been my greatest moment.
The thing I was best at was anything that involved few turns. I was probably going to have to do something about that, maybe it would become easier if I kept working on it. My wings needed to get stronger after all. I doubted that Rainbow started off being able to do what she could do now. A final loopty-loop, and then I heard a yawn coming from my instructor.
"Meh, this is starting to get boring. Let's see if we can't make this a little more exciting." When I heard those words, I was worried. "We're going to prank Pinkie Pie." That had me worried a little more, but only because I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. At the same time, though, it did sound pretty fun. A wide grin overtook my face as I thought about getting a little revenge for all the pranking she had done on me.
It was all in good fun, after all.
"Okay, we're going to need to get a couple of things from my house. It shouldn't take that long."
~Time passes~
I didn't know what we needed the dye for, but I had the impression that she would tell me soon. A few eggs were another weird thing. The last thing was the vegetable oil. I looked at the basket, then to Rainbow, and back to the basket.
"The eggs are a cake. Apparently she isn't allowed to use the ones from Sugarcube Corner anymore after an accident." Rainbow shrugged, then looked forward. "I didn't ask, she didn't say." That still left the other things, but she quickly told me about that as well. "Remember. Oil in the shampoo bottle, dye in the soap bottle." A green coat, that would be hillarious if it worked.
"I will play the role of awesome distraction."
Everything made perfect sense, I couldn't really say anything. None of this would be bad enough to be anything more than good fun. I didn't know what the oil in the shampoo bottle would do, but I mentally shrugged and ust followed. "So you're going to bake a cake with her? Didn't see you being a baker... no offense."
"None taken." She shrugged, not even stopping for a second. "It isn't like I do it a lot, mainly for Pinkie. You should have seen my first baking attempt... the cake didn't turn out as awesome as I would have hoped." I quickly decided to not ask for details, she probably wouldn't have given them. Besides, I just needed to ask Pinkie later. That way I could have gotten all of the details.
It couldn't have been that bad.
"Just fly up after I get Pinkie's attention."
As soon as I saw Pinkie, that was my signal to move. I might not have been the fastest fllier, but I moved fast enough to get to the window. I had to carefully open the window, move in, and then try to hover over the floor. All of this was far more difficult than I thought it would be, but it was fun as well. Dye in the soap bottle, vegetable oil in the shampoo, and soon enough I was starting for the window.
It was at about that time that I heard the words. "Oooo, Spike, what're you doing in my room? Is it a surprise?" A smile was on her face. "Come on, you can tell me. I won't let anypony know." My eyes moved to the window, ye I had just seen Rainbow motion me to try to get out of there.
"Ummmm... can't tell ya, gotta go." I pushed myself to fly faster than I had, which for me was going at adecent speed instead of slightly slower than my walk, and I rushed out the soon open window. It was only when we were about five minutes away that I stopped and landed. "I... thought... you... could... distract.... her." The worst idea I had was trying to catch my breath and talk.
"Some-dragon was a little too loud." I hadn't noticed making any noise, but there seemingly wasn't any time to argue. Rainbow looked worried when she looked away from me. "Oh feathers, Pinkie's following us. Let's get a move on, Spike. She's faster than she looks." That was enough incentive to get moving, and soon enough the two of us were speeding through the air with a pink earth pony following behind.
Well, this looked like it was going to be an interesting day.