It was a cloudy day and Tress watched as the world passed below her as she carefully glided through the air on the power of her mane alone. Flying right next to her was Smart who was instructing her on hang glider dynamics that the pixie had memorized for these hair gliding lessons. Jumping off a cliff before would not have been as exhilarating as it felt now.
“We’ve been doing this for about an hour now. You still have to show up for the running of the leaves you know!” Smart yelled to make sure Tress heard her.
“Thanks for reminding me. I guess my fun had to end sometime.” Tress didn’t turn her head and tilted it to the right slightly, her body slowly turned to float towards the lake. She was not ready to land on hard ground yet; it was even a bit problematic trying to find thermal updrafts to gain some height.
“Welcome to our final descent of T. Ravel Airlines this is you’re captain Smart speaking, after an hour of getting plenty of lift with your mane you are now coming in for landing. Please remember to pull up into a stall to slowly float toward the ground or water at your discretion and thank you for flying air hair!” Smart thought she was being so cutesy with her commentary.
Tress alighted and flailed her four hooves slightly at the air as she splashed down into some shallow water safely. She slowly paddled to the shore sighing at the wistful memories of swinging across the cityscape with her mane and tail. Even when she was insane she had had a lot of fun being the Mane-iac and would one day soon recover that side of herself. It was the side of her with an entirely different cutie mark; it meant that special talents or destinies weren’t exactly set in stone if your mark could change like hers had. She wondered if she even still had that other cutie mark hidden away in her powers.
“Come on slowpoke, you can dry off while you’re running or you can have Twilight wring you out.” Smart flew off leaving a trail of energy heading towards where the race was being held.
Winning was not the true goal of the race; it was knocking the leaves out of the trees with the thunderous pounding of many hooves against the road.
Tress slowly started off after Smart, idly thinking of how it felt to glide through the air with the greatest of ease. She wondered if she could flap her mane to fly. Well stability was a big issue if she was going to be flapping her mane awkwardly, there was her body mass and weight to think of and it wasn’t feasible or even worthwhile to try it when gliding was faster and easier to learn. She should also consider using her hair as a parachute when she needed to fall straight down.
“Can we talk for a moment Tress?” The voice of Chrysalis drew Tress out of her reverie. The changeling was sitting on a tree branch with an unusually large monarch butterfly on her shoulder. The bug pony fluttered her way to the ground, her blue mane was now longer and she looked particularly healthy today with no visible mauling wounds.
“Hey Maul Me Sign, where’ve you been lately?” It had been a while since Chrysalis had somehow got mangled on her way back into their lives. “Is that the pet Fluttershy found for you? Looks docile enough and here I thought everything mauled you.”
“Where I’ve been is why I wanted to talk with you and possibly a few other ponies. Other than that Fluttershy found out what would make ideal pets for a changeling and I’m still trying to get over what happened with the Platypus before she did. That will always be the most traumatizing moment in my life bar none.” Chrysalis smiled when the butterfly on her back gave off a tiny almost indecipherable chirp in sympathy. “Apparently arthropods, arachnids and etcetera based creatures don’t hate changelings. My very friendly little pet here isn’t what I was expecting but I’m happy about it.”
“You do realize monarch butterflies only live for a short time right?” Tress knew once the changeling started following you around she wouldn’t leave until she’s at least said her piece or became bored.
“Not if they happen to be a familiar like your cat is, it’ll live about as long as I can and is not a regular monarch butterfly. It’s a giant monarch butterfly, they live much longer.” Funny, Chrysalis could almost taste shock coming off of Tress at that declaration. Maybe she didn’t know Pal was her familiar? Ah well, at least she does now.
“So what did you want to tell me or any pony for that matter specifically?” Tress was already on the path through the woods for today’s event, it wasn’t a big holiday but it was still pretty important. “You may want to hurry with that because I’ve got a race to get to.”
“I’ll give you the quick version then, celestial guards have been living in Ponyville scouting out for the elements of harmony. So far they’ve identified three and only need two more and one of those two being scouted out right now is Fluttershy as the element of kindness. They are having problems with finding the element of loyalty as Rainbow, Vinyl, Twilight and you are the current suspected elements of loyalty.” Chrysalis thought it was weird that this was of no surprise to Tress; she didn’t think she’d ever understand ponies completely.
“So Twilight was right, Celestia has already started in on her plan. I’m surprised the quasi immortal sun controller doesn’t have a backup plan in case things go horribly wrong, then again she’s a notable chess master and life is her favorite chess board.” Taking in the odd look from the changeling Tress decided to elaborate. “It’s what Twilight said and that’s taking into consideration the last nine hundred plus years of pony history where no pony or being otherwise has managed to depose her.”
“Sure she may be good at handling known blatantly loud threats, but I doubt she’d see a changeling attack coming before it’s too late.” It didn’t seem like it, but changelings were major information brokers and could find out anything even given their sometimes clumsy methods of infiltration.
“Thank you for sharing this with me, we’ll discuss it later.” Tress trotted up to the ponies who signed up for the race with Chrysalis following after a burst of green flames.
“Well, there is one other thing though. I have a few changelings looking into the Scootaloo case you started and never finished. We found out lots of interesting tidbits about her that the enchanted toy didn’t and it was hard even getting what little we know.” Receiving an intrigued look in her direction, Chrysalis smiled faintly with her dark Fluttershy doppelganger face. “Fluttershy didn’t want to give up on finding out stuff about Scootaloo and asked us to help her with it. She ironically didn’t want the Trouble Takers to get into trouble which is basically your modus operandi.”
“Can you tell us after the race? It’ll be starting soon.” Turning back to the other ponies Tress saw Twilight waiting with a group of other ponies.
“Sure thing, I’m racing as well. I think I’ve been gaining a little too much weight from all the good feelings around here recently and could stand to lose a few pounds of emotionally heavy fat.” Chrysalis slapped a number on her flank and followed Tress.
“Hey Tress how was your hang gliding session with Smart? Did everything go alright? You look slightly damp. Here I’ll take care of it.” With a flick of her horn Twilight separated a mass of water from Tress’s body and tossed it aside.
“Thanks Radiance, it was really fun. So how many of our friends are going to be doing the run?” The answer to Tress’s question was made clear by the numbers other ponies had on their flanks.
Every earth pony in Ponyville was going to do some running. A few unicorns and a pegasus or two wanted to join in as well. Even Lyra ran up to them on her hind legs bouncing on them with giddy excitement as a grumpy Bonbon followed her in the natural pony form of locomotion.
“Do you think Roseluck and Noteworthy are together? That’s almost like say Daisy and Lily have a thing because they are easily panicked. Well more so Lily anyway, though I think her and Daisy would fit together if they were like that. I swear Daisy, Rose and Lily are all instigators of their own panic attacks.” It appeared Rarity was having a nice conversation with Octavia.
“So you’ll let me rent out your balloon so that I can follow the race with a microphone. Wahoo, the mayor will be happy that I can do my job of helping with the event. Now all I need is a partner to help me commentate. Hmm, hey Fluttershy do you want to ride shotgun, okay great!” Pinkie was renting Cherry Berry's balloon. The hyperactive mare grabbed Fluttershy and leapt into the balloon without pause or even waiting for an answer. “Okay ponies time to round up and spread the leaves today! My guest speaker with me here is Fluttershy. Say hi to every pony that is watching us with all of their attention Fluttershy.”
“H-hi every pony, have fun and please don’t get hurt.” Fluttershy squeaked and ducked down in the balloon shivering. Pinkie gently patted Fluttershy on the head and got the balloon started; at least Fluttershy would have a good view of the race and had a medical kit on hoof if things went wrong.
“Fluttershy really could stand to be a little less shy.” Rainbow shook her head in exasperation as she made her way to the starting line.
“What can you do Rainbow, she wouldn’t be the mare we all liked if she ever stopped being so adorable.” Twilight knew she wasn’t going to be doing so well in the pack as she wasn’t the most athletic of mares, in comparison to some pony like Applejack who had both the endurance and stamina for this.
“I hear that sister.” Chrysalis liked how Fluttershy acted; it made it really fun to feed off of her overly friendly emotions.
“Come on guys, quiet down. I need to get into the zone.” Tress was trotting in place and started stretching out her legs.
“Easy for you to say, you’ve got longer legs than most ponies here. At least I know you don’t have the stamina to keep running full tilt for too long sugar cube.” Applejack was also stretching out; she along with every pony else turned to the mayor who walked up with her assistants. “I’m guessing it’s time to line up.”
“Hello every pony and welcome to Ponyville’s annual running of the leaves. If any pony gets hurt we’ll have medics on the scene to immediately deal with any injuries, Pinkie Pie will be making sure things are safe on the trail. Now get ready to start, three, two, one… GO!” At the sound of the mayor’s voice telling them to start, the racing ponies were all off into a slow gallop causing a thunderous noise that shook the ground.
The end result of the race was that Tress made second, Twilight got seventh, Rainbow was third as running wasn’t her thing, Applejack was first place due in part to her massive stamina. Octavia was surprisingly fourth place, Lyra came in twentieth which was impressive for a mare that was running on two legs, Bonbon was fifth just ahead of Lily who was freaked out into sixth by a spider holding a flower up to her.
Chrysalis took her dear sweet time with finishing as she was enjoying nature with her pet giant butterfly; she wasn’t in last place. That belonged to Time Turner who was chased off the path by what he called an evil statue that he had to take care of before he could finish.
“So you had something to tell us Chrysalis?” Twilight dragged Chrysalis, Fluttershy and Tress off to the side away from the celebrating ponies. The ground all around Ponyville was now covered in leaves.
Chrysalis unloaded the information of the search of element of harmony bearers to the ponies and then she got to what she learned of Scootaloo. The ponies wanted her to tell them something they didn’t already know so she went ahead with it.
“I don’t know if this means much to you but we’ve noticed following around her protectors that she has incredible agility and balance for a little filly. It led to us learning that her inability to fly isn’t due to a wing deficiency.” Chrysalis really didn’t like what was being done to the filly, but she didn’t know the entire story behind it to make a full judgment of the situation. “She may as well be from another world entirely given the level of information blackout protection going on around her. The most disturbing fact we found is that her wings are being clipped to make sure she doesn’t fly; we still don’t know why Celestia is ordering her guards to do that. I can report that no permanent damage has been done to the filly, except possibly emotional damage. We don’t have much more to go on other then the fact that AK Yearling personally leaves her a birthday present every year and reportedly cares deeply about her. We’ll keep you posted if we find out anything else.”
“Well there’s some disturbing news that just ruined my good mood.” Tress along with any pony that heard Chrysalis’s information was not a happy camper with Celestia at the moment.
There had to be a very good reason behind it or even Fluttershy might actually start taking drastic action to protect Scootaloo from whatever was going on around her.