While the remainder of the Cutie Mark Crusaders were making plans at the clubhouse, Scootaloo was now undergoing a number of different wing-exercises under Rumble's supervision. It turned out to be very little different to when Rainbow Dash was training her, although Rumble was rather concerned about how hard she was pushing herself.
“How am I doing so far?” she panted, midway through the wing push-ups she was currently doing.
Rumble hesitated. “Um...not bad,” he answered, trying his best to sound tactful, “but you don't really want to overdo it. If you really want to improve your wings, it's better to work up to it gradually, otherwise you might hurt yourself.”
Scootaloo gave a muffled grunt of dismissal. “I'll be fine,” she retorted. “I've done about 40 push-ups so far; I can easily beat that.”
“25 would have been a safer number at this stage,” advised Rumble. “You shouldn't push yourself too hard, or you'll...” but he was cut off by a sudden pained yelp from Scootaloo. Her wings caved in, and she flopped onto her belly, panting heavily and grimacing in discomfort. “What is it?”
Scootaloo sat up and held her right wing. “I think I've just pulled a wing muscle,” she groaned, gingerly rubbing a particularly sore patch.
Rumble shook his head gravely. “I did warn you, Scootaloo.”
“Great, now I'm gonna have to walk it back home!” lamented Scootaloo unhappily. “No way will I be able to propel my scooter properly with just one wing.”
This made Rumble feel a little ashamed of himself for what he had just said. He wanted Scootaloo to be able to fly better, but the last thing he had wanted out of it was for her to sustain a similar injury to his when they had first met. Cautiously, he looked left and right before turning his attention back to her.
“Don't worry, Scootaloo,” he soothed. “Just lay down again and hold still. This might hurt a little.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Just trust me.”
Scootaloo was still rather confused, but did as she was told. Once she had laid herself flat again, Rumble carefully took her wing in his hooves and gently began to massage it. The orange filly inhaled sharply, but soon began to enjoy the feeling of Rumble's firm hooves slowly running through her feathers, and let out a moan of pleasure as the pain gradually faded away. By the time he had finished, her wing felt as refreshed as if she had never sprained it in the first place.
“Wow, Rumble, that felt surprisingly nice,” remarked Scootaloo, standing up. “Where did you learn how to massage that well?”
Rumble blushed and placed a hoof against the back of his head. “Just a knack, I guess,” he replied. “I gotta ask, though, how often do you preen your wings?”
“What's preening got to do with it – and more to the point, what does that involve?”
“It's like when a pony brushes his or her mane every morning to keep it clear of knots and tangles,” explained Rumble. “Pegasi generally tend to fly better if their feathers are nice and smooth, so it's very important for them to sort of 'iron' them out every so often. Yours didn't feel as though they'd been preened at all.”
Scootaloo looked away sheepishly. “I never realised I actually needed to smooth my feathers out every once in a while,” she muttered.
“Well, more like once a day at least. I myself tend to use a special feather-preening brush set like most other ponies; it's not nearly as effective as using your mouth like most Pegasi used to do, but that sort of thing is frowned upon in public nowadays,” Rumble pointed out. “I found that out the hard way one Sports Day when I realised I hadn't preened my wings before I had gone out. I was due to take part in a race that afternoon and I didn't want to lose, so in desperation I went behind a bush and tried to smooth my feathers out without anypony noticing – but of course that didn't happen. Silver Spoon happened to be nearby, and she caught me with part of my right wing in my mouth as she passed by.” He blushed again, this time so heavily that his whole face was as red as an apple.
“I gather it didn't end well for you,” remarked Scootaloo.
“It sure didn't. I easily won the race, but at the cost of being humiliated not just by Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara, but by three colts in my class. All they ever spoke about after that was the colt who kept licking himself!” Rumble glanced down at the ground, scowling with hurt and anger. “It was so embarrassing that I just locked myself away in my room and didn't come out for days, and after Dad got home from his latest race and I told him what had been going on earlier, he explained that oral wing-preening in public was considered uncouth. I felt like such an idiot – if only I'd learned it sooner, I would have been a bit more careful.”
Disturbed though she was about the notion of Rumble preening his wings in such a fashion, Scootaloo nevertheless felt sorry for what he had had to go through. She noticed a few angry tears glistening in his eyes, and rested a hoof on his shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. “Never mind, Rumble,” she soothed. “It's all in the past now. Besides, surely you got your own back on them at some point?”
“Now you come to mention it, yes I did,” replied Rumble, grinning smugly. “Even though Dad had to explain why what I had been doing was wrong, he promised to speak with Miss Cheerilee about it – and get this, when I came in on Monday, she made all five of them apologise to me in front of my class! The look on their faces was priceless!”
“Just like the time her dad forced her to help us sing to the water for the next Zap-Apple season, huh?!” laughed Scootaloo.
“Kinda like that,” affirmed Rumble. “But one of the three colts was so stubborn that he refused to say anything of the sort to me, so in the end he was given about an hour's detention. None of them said anything so horrible about me for a long time after that.”
Scootaloo chortled at the thought of Diamond Tiara trying her hardest to keep what remained of her dignity intact as she apologised to a distraught Rumble, while Cheerilee stood behind with a stern look on her face. She could almost hear her and Rumble's schoolmates laughing and pointing at the humiliated pink filly.
“Anyway, I reckon that's enough training for today,” finished Rumble. “You got anything else planned, Scootaloo?”
“Not really,” admitted Scootaloo, “but I could do with a snack from Sugarcube Corner after all that. Wanna come with?”
Rumble smiled and nodded in reply, but secretly he was a little taken aback. Had Scootaloo really just asked him out, he wondered?
“Hop aboard then,” offered Scootaloo, slipping her helmet on and mounting her scooter.
At that very same moment, the rest of the Cutie Mark Crusaders were at the bakery discussing possible plans for bringing Scootaloo and Rumble together. Dinky hadn't said more than two words about it thus far, but in any event, her worries were compounded by the fact that Apple Bloom, rather tastelessly, seemed to have chosen to use their matchmaking antics as a means of getting her own back on Scootaloo.
Sweetie-Belle had noticed this too, but she wasn't as much worried as annoyed with how persistent the yellow farm filly was being. “Suck it up, Apple Bloom!” she urged crossly. “Just because Scootaloo was being so difficult earlier doesn't mean you have to be too!”
“Ah don't care!” scowled Apple Bloom. “That shrunken ostrich has crossed the line once too often – Ah'm not lettin' her off of the hook this time!”
“Look, you're just gonna put her off dating with Rumble if you carry on the way you are! Besides, I thought you said you'd help us bring them together!”
“Only so Ah could teach Scootaloo a lesson in...”
“GUYS! We've got company!” squeaked Noi suddenly.
The Crusaders glanced towards the window. Sure enough, Scootaloo was motoring towards the bakery on her scooter, with Rumble clinging on behind her. Realising that their chance had come, Tootsie Flute quickly whispered something to the others before galloping over to the counter...
Scootaloo coasted gently to a halt just outside the bakery door, and once she and Rumble had dismounted, she propped it against the wall and hung her helmet on one of the handlebars before following him inside. Not surprisingly, she noted, there were plenty of fillies and colts hanging out here, but strangely the Cutie Mark Crusaders seemed to be spread out among different tables, rather than just the one as was normally the case. Dinky and Pipsqueak were sat at the one by the window while Sweetie-Belle was chatting up a pleasantly surprised Lickety-Split at another.
As the two Pegasi approached the counter, Pinkie Pie bounced into view. “Hey, Scootaloo, how's it going with the Crusaders?” she chirped in her usual jolly manner. “Been up to much lately?”
“Um...this and that,” replied Scootaloo absent-mindedly. “Got any of those nice cupcakes Rainbow Dash and I were trying out the other day?”
“You're in luck, Scoot; those cupcakes were such a big hit that we're down to the last of them right now. How does that even make sense though, a cake hitting a pony? They can't even fly unless they're butterfly cakes – but hang on, butterfly cakes can't fly either...what about fairy cakes? Do fairy cakes have...no, wait, I forgot they don't have wings...maybe if they were angel cakes they might...nah, they don't have any wings either – what's with that?”
The two Pegasi laughed as they listened to Pinkie Pie rambling on about how cakes couldn't fly. They were used to the pink party pony's antics, even if she sometimes caught them by surprise.
“Well, if they can't fly, then why don't you bring a couple over here then?” interrupted Scootaloo after a while.
“Okey-dokey-lokey!” replied Pinkie Pie cheerfully, and dived underneath the counter. Just half a second afterwards, the kitchen door opened, and she emerged with two cupcakes balanced on a tray on her back. The two young Pegasi could only stare in disbelief.
“There you go – two scrum-diddly-umptious apple drizzle cupcakes! That'll be two bits and fifty cents.”
“Thanks, Pinkie,” said Scootaloo, handing over two gold coins and a larger silver one.
“Same for mine?” asked Rumble, digging through his satchel in search of some change.
“Nope – apple drizzle cupcakes are one-twenty-five each.”
“Oh – in that case, I'll see if I can pay you back the cost of mine.”
Scootaloo stifled a chuckle and rolled her eyes. “You don't owe me anything, Rumble,” she insisted. “It's only been our first session, and already you've taught me a great deal about flying that I never knew before, not even when Rainbow Dash was training me. I thought I'd pay for yours as a way of thanking you.”
Rumble smiled gratefully in reply. “Aw, Scootaloo – you didn't need to do that for me.”
“Well...I wanted to,” rejoined Scootaloo, blushing slightly. “That's how good a friend you are.”
The two Pegasus foals stood and gazed into each other's eyes for a few moments, during which time everything else around them seemed to fade from existence, leaving just the two of them on their own. In the distance, they thought they could hear a lonely violin playing a soft, romantic tune...
Wait, what?! A violin? Rumble snapped out of his trance and looked over his shoulder. It turned out that the violin music was coming from a gramophone over in the far corner of the room; but the emotions that it had stirred up between him and Scootaloo were overshadowed by the many eyes he could feel watching them.
“Um......Scootaloo,” he ventured, “how do you feel about having to sit and listen to Beethoofen?”
Scootaloo stuck her tongue out disdainfully. “Not really my thing, Rumble,” she admitted. “Let's just take our cupcakes outside; it's way too crowded in here anyway.”
With that, each of them carefully balanced a cupcake on their wing and trotted over to an empty table just outside the door. Scootaloo felt a great sense of relief as they sat down, but before she could take the first bite of her cupcake, they heard a disappointed yell of “OH, COME ON!!” from inside the bakery. Both she and Rumble stared towards the doorway in confusion.
Sweetie-Belle slammed her head against the table, still frustrated after her outburst. “How could I have forgotten that Scootaloo dislikes classical music?!” she growled angrily. “Great suggestion that turned out to be – not!”
Tootsie Flute sighed heavily. “Not your fault, Sweetie-Belle,” she said unhappily. “We should have planned all this well in advance instead of just taking it as it came – seems that success from Beethoofen music alone was way too much to hope for.”
“Wouldn't it be better to just let their relationship develop naturally?” asked Lickety-Split reasonably. “You guys might end up putting them off if you overcrowd them.”
“No way!” snapped Apple Bloom. “If that Scootaloo thinks she can trump me with that stupid claim o' hers that she'd never be caught dead datin', then she's got another thing comin'! We're getting' Scoot an' Rumble together if it's the last thing we do!”
This turned out to be much easier said than done though. They tried all sorts of tricks, but nothing worked; Dinky tried suspending what she thought was a bough of mistletoe above Scootaloo and Rumble, but it turned out to be sycamore, so neither Pegasus paid it any attention. Tornado Bolt tried to form cloud trails in the sky in the shape of a heart, with the letters “I” and “U” either side and Scootaloo's name underneath, but her trails dispersed as fast as she could fly. Even when Apple Bloom tried to sneak a box of chocolates into Rumble's hoof as a gift for Scootaloo while the two Pegasi were out walking with each other (she would have gone for flowers, but knowing the tomboyish Pegasus filly, chocolates were the better bet), she couldn't even get close without appearing too conspicuous, and eventually had to give up. By the following Saturday, the Cutie Mark Crusaders felt exhausted.
“This really takes the biscuit for tough Cutie Mark Crusader missions, and no mistake,” remarked Pipsqueak wearily. “Whoever could've known that matchmaking was so demanding?”
“I'll say,” agreed Dinky. “The amount of sleep I lost trying to think up some way of getting Scootaloo and Rumble together you wouldn't believe – Mommy was really worried to see me so tired this morning.”
Apple Bloom gritted her teeth angrily. “That Scootaloo's playin' with our heads! Ah just know it!” she growled. “We're gonna have ta really step up our game if we wanna get our Cutie Marks in matchmakin'!”
“Maybe, but there's no need to get on your high horse about it,” Sweetie-Belle tried to reason. “Lickety-Split could well be right about letting those two take their time over it, you know. If we gain Cutie Marks in matchmaking, so much the better, but if it doesn't work out, we just need to accept it and move on.”
“An' let 'er carry on in the same way as before?! Forget it!” huffed Apple Bloom sharply. “What that Scootaloo needs is a taste of 'er own medicine – an' she's gonna get it whether she likes it or not!”
Noi directed a worried glance towards Tornado Bolt. “I don't like this, Tornado,” she murmured. “Apple Bloom just seems so...what's the word...vengeful.”
“You're right there. The way she's talking, she might as well have been plotting something way, way worse – something like murder,” put in Tootsie Flute. “I sure hope one of us can sort her out before somepony gets hurt. Perhaps I'd better see if Twilight can help us with this whole matchmaking malarkey; she's bound to have a book on the subject,” and she trotted out of the clubhouse.