//------------------------------// // Sixth Year (18) // Story: Bloodlines // by SleepIsforTheWeak //------------------------------// He is eighteen. Finally legal to do… most things. Dash would be lying if she said that it didn’t make her nervous, but Pinkie assures her that their colt is mature enough to not go getting into a ton of trouble. He’s back in school, now. Had just left for his sixth year the night before, and once more the oppressing quiet settles over the household without him. She wonders, just for the tiniest of seconds, if she was right to encourage him to go back. She brushes the thought off, of course. He was close to—one year away from—being one of the proud graduates of Cloudsdale Flight Academy and she hates to admit it, but that school was factually the best flight school in Equestria. In other occurrences, it’s her and Pinkie’s twenty year wedding anniversary. AJ and Rarity, and Fluttershy and Mac agree to take in their foals for the weekend while the two of them go to the Crystal Kingdom. The trip is spent mostly in their room. In their bed. He is eighteen and in his sixth year. The final frontier. Sixth year is called the Flush Out Year. Classes are top of the line—easily five hours of homework every night. One absence of class is an automatic fail. He is a nervous wreck. All year, he has had no down time. He’s absolutely burned out. Many times he complains to dean Blizzard about the workload during their weekly lunches together, and the old stallion simply smiles and says it will all be worth it when he reaches seventh year. Before Heartswarming, they have a five hundred question exam on which they are to score in the margin of eighty percent on. That’s four hundred out of the five hundred questions that they have to get right. Or else. Heartswarming comes and goes and he holds his breath, too nervous to do anything fun with his family. But the letter telling him that he didn’t pass the exam never comes. Second semester starts. His group of well over a hundred in the first year has shrunk to something like fifty. The professors murmur around them, and the day they come back from Heartswarming they are called into the auditorium and formally told by a proudly smiling Dr. Blizzard that their class has the biggest post-exam count ever recorded in the school’s long and proud history. Classes are called off for sixth years for the first three days back, as reward. “Hey, LD.” He looks up from his textbook, which he was only pretending to read, at the sound of the voice. Holy Celestia… Dancing. Breeze. Curves and slick feathers and blue eyes and Celestia does she smell amazing when she walks by him. His eyes roll into the back of his head as he takes a generous sniff, drawing the attention of several ponies in the library with him. He watches Dancing Breeze make her way into the back of the library and spread her homework out. Oh right. Fifth year. This is what he has been doing with his three free days. Practically stalking a pretty filly in the library. Regrets are for the uncool. Dancing has a coltfriend. Of course she does, or else everypony would be on that flank. Lightning had never met this coltfriend of Dancing’s but he does know that he can fly circles around whoever that lucky bastard is. He smirks to himself and nods, getting up from the comfy armchair near the fireplace. The comfy sofas and armchairs are usually only reserved for the seventh years but, well, he’s Lightning Dash. Heh. He nearly slithers to Dancing’s table. She’s humming a small melody as she does her homework, and he feels his heart warm. So cute. “Oh, hey, LD.” She catches sight of him as he sits next to her and she smiles. “How are you? Enjoying the three day break?” Oh yes. Very much. “Very much.” He answers easily, not at all the way he does in his head. It’s weird. Before last year, his thoughts about the opposite gender had always been appreciative, but in a detached and rather observant way. Something had changed in him, somehow, and now he was totally perving. He frowns and shakes the thought out of his head. “How’s your coltfriend?” he asks Dancing. Dancing talks at length about her coltfriend Solar Star. Solar Star. What kind of colt’s name was that? Nevertheless, he listens attentively only to find that Dancing is completely smitten with her coltfriend. Whatever. He’s not a relationship wrecker. He couldn’t live with himself if he even thought about trying it. So, begrudgingly, he turns his thoughts into the friend zone and the two of them chat until Dancing has to go to her last class. They have dinner that night, and breakfast the next morning, and before he knows it, they’re friends. That’s good, because he still needs some of those. Where was his fanclub? Didn’t Blizzard tell him that the school rebelled because he was expelled? Or had he dreamt that? Everypony treats him the same way they did before he left! …Whatever. At the end of the year, after final exams, there is a big race. Another Flush Out event, no doubt, since only the sixth years are made to participate. He remembers going to a race like this every year in the past as it was required of them. The race is simple—from the academy to the tip of the Canterlot Mountain and back. A straight loop. Fifty miles there, fifty back. No problem. The groans and whimpers of fear from his classmates tell him it is a problem. They take off at the starting line in the heart of the academy. The whole school cheers for them, some even holding up signs. He spots his name more than once. The sky is clear, and the sun just at the right angle for flying, as if set that way by Celestia herself. They take off and he quickly pulls ahead, as if breaking through a barrier. He flattens his body, almost gliding, if gliding was done at speeds he’s going. He closes his eyes for just a second, simply feeling. Feeling the wind caress his mane and brush his fur, feeling his wings beat steadily and push him to the limit of his speed threshold. Even the tight suction on the flight goggles thrills him, as does his constant need to press his lips together to keep them from peeling back at the speed. Flying. This is it. This is all I want.