Morning had come and Light Seeker was still trying to sort out his father’s words from the previous night. From what he could tell he had learned two things. First, it was apparently considered normal for colts and stallions to never understand the way fillies and mares thought. Second, talking about it in their presence got you in trouble, as his father did in fact end up sleeping outside on the roof.
A frown appeared on Light’s face as he considered more important things. Like the fact that three certain fillies had distracted him yesterday and that meant he had more to do today than he had intended. Sighing, the colt hung his head in defeat, he had hoped to be done with the wing pack by noon today and that would give him some time to go to the park and have some fun before the weekend was over. But with the leftover things on his to do list from yesterday there was no way he’d have time for that now.
Light Seeker landed in front of the hanger workshop, unlocked the door and returned the key to it’s hiding spot. Tossing his saddlebags on his desk, he fetched the welding torch and got to work welding the last of the rocket mount attachment points to the wing pack.
He had just finished welding the last mounting point when a bang rang out from the door. He wasn’t expecting any more deliveries so he guessed it had to be the fillies from yesterday. But given their enthusiasm the previous day he didn’t expect them to give up after only one day.
“She said yes!” was shouted at him the instant he opened the door to find the trio of fillies.
“Who said wha-? Wait, you actually found somepony willing to work with… you did show them the sample fabric right?” Light Seeker stumbled over his words, still finding it hard to believe that they had succeeded.
“Yeah! We even made sure to tell her that it was going to be a full body pleasure suit.” Sweetie Belle squeaked with pride.
“Diving suit.” Apple Bloom corrected incorrectly.
“I’m telling you it looks like a jumpsuit to me!” Scootaloo insisted.
“Whatever the point is Rarity got the idea that it was a full body thingy and said ‘yes’.”
The fillies continued to argue over what the pressure suit looked like to them but Light Seeker was too busy thinking to pay any attention to that. He had planed on maybe taking the suit back to the dive shop that made it to have it modified. But that would mean waiting until Heaven knows when for him to get one of his parents to take him back to Fillydelphia just to try.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” the colt whispered to himself. His rocket pack flights had taught him more than enough, that no matter how much he planed things out, he usually had to do a lot of improvising to get anything close to his intended outcome. While a trip into the nearby town hadn’t been in his plans at all, if it could get him a remade pressure suit in a timely manner it was worth the trivial risk of wasting a day. “Okay. Who is this Rarity and where can I find her?” Light Seeker asked loud enough to be heard this time.
“Come on! We’ll show ya!” Apple Bloom cheered as she and her friends stopped arguing and bolted out the door. Light grabbed his saddlebags, tossed two scrolls from his desk into them, locked the door on his way out and followed the trio of fillies.
Scootaloo lead the way on her scooter, towing her friends in the usual wagon while Light Seeker flew along side them. First they headed straight east until they hit the dirt road, where the colt noticed a small wooden arrow pointing toward his workshop that he didn’t remember existing before. From there the crusaders turned south leading him toward Ponyville.
About half way to town Light Seeker couldn’t help but notice that as impressively fast as the pegasus filly was on the dirt road, even hauling her friends, she was easy to keep up with while flying. And that brought a question into the colt’s mind. “Scootaloo, can I ask you something?”
“What’s up?”
“I was wondering. If all you came out here to do was give me a message and then lead me back to town, why did you bring them along?” He asked motioning to the two fillies in the wagon.
“Because we’re the cutie mark crusaders, so we do things as a team.” Scootaloo responded as if the answer was so obvious that the question was silly.
“I don’t see how you need their help just to deliver a message and you’d be way faster if you weren’t hauling them around.”
“Are you saying that I should just ditch my friends out here in the middle of nowhere?” Scootaloo glared up and the colt.
“No! That would be rude to bring somepony out someplace and then make them hike back on their own. You-”
“Exactly!” Scootaloo interrupted, with the accusing sound of her voice lessened.
“…I’m just saying you should’ve left them at home to begin with and done the errand alone.” He whimpered.
“What’s with colts always thinking they have to do things alone?” Apple Bloom asked, drawing a round of laughter from her friends.
“We don’t. But it reduces the number of variables at least.”
“What’s a variable?” Scootaloo asked.
“I think it has something to do with math.” Sweetie Belle answered.
Light Seeker shook his head in disappointment, so much for any of them knowing more about math than him, though he explained anyway. “A variable is something with many possible values. Like in X plus Y equals Z you have three variables. You can give X and Y any value you want and those dictate the value of Z.”
“Dictate? Isn’t that like mean people who run countries?” Apple Bloom asked?
“No, I think that’s dictator.” Sweetie Belle guessed.
“Well wouldn’t dictate be what dictators do?” Apple Bloom defended her guess.
“What are you two? Dictionaries?” Scootaloo said, rolling her eyes.
The three fillies continued to argue, but Light Seeker was dumbfounded. How in creation did a conversation about math turn into one about governmental archetypes? Did one of them just mention crystal ponies? How they hey did they have any thing to do with anything they had been talking about? A building pain in his head compelled him to mutter, “I’ll wait for you ahead.” And with that Light flapped his wings harder and sped on ahead, not sure and not really caring if his arguing guides heard him.
Light Seeker landed at the edge of Ponyville, at the first split in the road. Though it only took a few minutes for the crusaders to come into view it was long enough to clear his head. As they approached it became clear that at least they had finished their heated debate on whatever wild tangent they ended up on.
The motor like buzz of Scootaloo’s wings intrigued the waiting colt and he wondered how you had to feather your wings to make them make that sound. He imitated the high speed flapping of the filly for a moment but only got a soft flittering noise. However she was doing it, it sounded cool to him.
“Why’d you ditch us?!” Scootaloo demanded, as soon as she was in earshot, she sounded mad but she looked worried.
“Because you three were giving me a headache.” Light answered honestly.
“Then why are you just sitting here?”
“Because I don’t know where I’m going and you three are supposed to be guiding me. This is the first fork in the road and I don’t know what way to go.”
“See? You shouldn’t have ditched us!” Scootaloo seemed relieved in such a way that Light Seeker could only assume her friends had blamed her for chasing him off.
That thought aside, Light was trying to figure out why she had rebuked at him just now. How had his plan not worked perfectly? He had bought himself a moment of peace and quite and tactically placed himself at the first place that he could make a wrong decision on the way to an unknown destination to wait for his guides. What had he done worthy of even masked anger? Giving up on finding the logic of it, he recalled his father’s advice and reminded himself that it was okay to admit that colts would never understand fillies.
The crusaders guided Light Seeker to what was possibly the most gaudy building in all of Ponyville, the Carousel Boutique. Its shape lived up to its name, and the inside was just as much a showpiece as the outside, with gemstone embroidery in every dress. Aside from the four foals the only other pony in the building was a white unicorn mare with a long purple mane and blue gems for a cutie mark.
The sound of hoofsteps caused the mare to quickly shut a curtain, hiding an unfinished work from public eyes, “Welcome to… oh hello girls, ah yes, you must be the dashing young gentlecolt they told me about. A pleasure to meet you, I am Rarity.”
“And you’ve seen the sample of the material you’ll need to work with?” Light asked.
“Why yes, but aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” Rarity asked, seemingly put off by the lack of formality.
“Light Seeker.” He said, giving a small nod as a sign of respect to offset his disinterested tone. He didn’t really mean to come across as rude by skipping a formal introduction, it was just that the colt never really considered who he was to be important to anything.
“Very well then Light Seeker, now these three told me you wanted a suit, though they seemed to have conflicting opinions as to what kind.”
“Yes, it needs to be a full body pressure suit, to protect me from depressurization sickness at high altitude, and the one I have now leaks too much, I’m worried it will drain the air tank too fast to keep it pressurized. Do you think you can do that?”
“A few years ago I’d have said ‘no’ up front. However, thanks to my friends I’ve become more accustom to accepting challenges outside my comfort zone. And to be perfectly honest with you, I’ve found myself in need of a new source of inspiration of late.” Rarity answered, with a slightly embarrassed blush and a dart of the eyes toward the workspace she hid moments earlier.
Light Seeker spent the rest of the day discussing the needs of the suit and what he had learned that demanded changes to his first one. Like the need to add airtight metal joints at the legs and wings that wouldn’t stiffen even more once the suit was pressurized. Rarity had even been so generous as to treat him to lunch as they discussed the project. While she seemed slightly disappointed by his constant reminders that the suit was all about function, not form, she agreed to make the suit.
Flying home with plenty of time to beat sunset Light Seeker felt good about the day’s events. Having left behind the scroll with the formula for the resin needed to make the airtight fabric and a notice to the crusaders that he wouldn’t be back at his workshop until next saturday, everything seemed in order. But something was nagging him, like something felt missing. Double-checking his saddlebags he found everything he thought should to be there so he shrugged off the feeling and continued home.
* * * * * * *
At home Light Seeker was in his room minding his own business, waiting for dinner to be ready when he felt a presence in the room. Judging the weight of hoofsetps on a cloud floor was almost impossible. But he did hear one clue that allowed him to identify whom it was behind him, the ruffling sound of feathers with thick, coarse hairs, a stallion’s feathers. “Hey dad,” he said, without even looking.
“You continue to amaze me son.”
His dad called him ‘son’? That couldn’t be good, his dad only did that when it was time for a ‘serious’ talk, “That’s nice, I’m guessing you didn’t come up here to test my powers of perception though.”
“Again you’re powers of perception are correct.” The stallion chuckled, “Your mother seems to think you have ‘that look’ in your eye again.”
Light Seeker finally looked up from the homemade fireworks he had been making, looking to the mirror on his dresser. However, as far as he could tell both his eyes looked the same as always, they weren’t even bloodshot like when he snuck out late to watch a firework show. “What look in my eye?”
“The one you get when you’re almost done with one of your wing packs. While I may not be the keen eye your mother is, I do know that you make way more fireworks than usual when you get close to finishing your wing packs.”
The colt looked beside his workbench, the fireworks launcher he had made and expanded over the years was almost full again. He blinked as he stared at it, he could have sworn it was only half full last night. Did he really make that many in one evening? “But, I always make fireworks when I’m bored…” he defended, despite the apparent accuracy of his father’s observation.
“Not with that much zeal you don’t.”
His father was being too blunt with his responses, and the tone of voice told all the rest. “Are you saying you don’t want me to finish the wing pack?” Light Seeker guessed.
The stallion breathed a heavy sigh, “I’m not, but your mom would be very happy if you stopped strapping rockets to yourself.”
“I’ve always known mom worries about me. What are you saying?” Light Seeker asked, thinking there was no reason for his dad to restate what was already known and that they had to be having this conversation because something had changed, otherwise why bring the topic up?
“Do you remember the story of the pony with his head in the clouds?”
“The one about the pegasus that spent all his time looking at the sky, that he took forever to notice that the love of his life was an earth pony until he got injured and was forced to look at what was on the ground for once? Yes, dad. What of it?”
“I’m surprised you don’t have fireworks on your flank. Are you sure you’re not looking in the wrong place for your destiny too?” the stallion sighed deeply and added, “If I asked you to stop making the wing pack, would you?”
Light Seeker thought carefully about his response for a moment. “You taught me to fly, you taught me logic, reason, philosophy. You let me fill out order forms for rocket motors with your name on them, you were the only one who pushed me to chase my own dreams even when mom was against me. What changed?”
“I saw how close you were getting to the altitude record… I thought, if you got it you would finally be satisfied. Finally stop taking these risks. But you kept going, it’s like the sky just isn’t high enough for you.”
“Dad, this has never been about the record to me. You know I didn’t even know they had one for that until I got it.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
Light Seeker deflated, he didn’t have an answer for that. He didn’t know why he was driven to keep flying higher. Of the many things he revered his father for teaching him one of them was honor. If the last of his parents stopped supporting his quest, what choice did he have but to honor their will? When he finally answered it came out in a whimper, “You taught me many things, one of them was honor. If you ask me to give up the only dream I’ve ever had… I will.”
The father stood motionless far longer than the son had hoped, with each passing second Light Seeker feared he would have his dreams crushed in this instant. His father turned away and with his back turned and head bowed he finally gave his answer, “Then I won’t ask you to stop… but I will ask you to use that logic and reason I taught you and recalculate the risk-reward equation of what you’re doing.” A moment of silence later and the stallion added, “It smells like dinner’s ready.”