There was a squeak of scooter wheels, and the orange blur vanished behind a tree.
Well... it mostly vanished. If the amateur spy had truly intended to stay concealed, she would have managed the feat with barely the slightest effort: the chosen tree was more than wide enough to conceal a lithe filly form. But she insisted on seeing her target, which meant her head kept poking out from concealment. Every so often, she would head-whip a notepad out of a saddlebag and mouthwrite a few observations. If anypony caught her at either activity, she pulled back as quickly as she could. (For the latter, she typically dropped the pad and had to snatch it out of sight well before she needed to convince herself nopony had noticed.) And once she was fully behind cover again, she seemed to instantly decide the effort had been a perfect one, nopony had figured out a thing, and she could just safely move on to the next tree once her target shifted position again. Because she was just that good. Exactly like everything else she ever attempted, none of which had ever produced a mark.
And also much like pretty much everything else she had ever attempted, just about all of Ponyville was fully aware of every last futile effort. Normally, that would have meant ponies in various states of worry, fear, incipient panic, shelter construction, and the occasional flurry of all-out evacuation. But in this case, her markless activity had a target. A very distinct one. Clearly that meant the target was the only pony in trouble. Also that the best place to be was Very Far Away From Him. This was presenting the target with some difficulties in daily interpony relationships.
But under one of the other hooves, it did tend to shorten the shopping lines when ponies scrambled in all directions while trying to avoid being anywhere in the vicinity when It Finally Happened. In this case, the target had just involuntarily emptied out an entire candy shop, and the former customers were currently lurking in their chosen cubbyholes all over the settled zone, waiting for some form of All Clear to be sounded, preferably in the form of a mark which many were convinced would never come.
Unfortunately for Bon-Bon, somepony had to stick around and collect the actual bits.
"Snowflake, did you know she's --"
He sighed. It was long, deep, sincere, and shifted four times the muscle mass of any other Ponyville resident on the way out, along with carrying three times the concern. "Yeah."
"How long has she been following you?"
He stomped his left forehoof twice, nodded to the wall calendar.
"Two days?" Bon-Bon wasn't even trying to hide her astonishment. "And you're still in one piece?"
Another nod. Admittedly, it was a rather isolated piece. After the first three hours, the town had collectively begun to assign him a personal blast radius.
The proprietor abruptly snickered. Snowflake raised an eyebrow, waited for the explanation.
"Well," she said, tone laced with conspiracy and mockery in not-quite-equal measure, "maybe it's not about Crusading this time. Maybe, just maybe, you're about to have the honor of being a certain rolling disaster area's first-ever filly cru --"
One more hoof stomp, one which came with just a little more power behind it.
It took twelve seconds before the nougats stopped vibrating on their trays. Three more for the display cases.
Bon-Bon swallowed.
"So... I'll just... wrap this up for you?"
Flatly, "Yeah."
He slowly trotted out, purchase safely tucked in his saddlebags, or as safely as anything could be with a Crusader on the prowl. Noted the presence of three ponies perched in what they must have decided were sheltering branches (none of which were anywhere near That Tree) and concealing late spring blooms, along with the very surprising fact that two of them were not pegasi, indicating either hasty assistance from the lone winged member of the trio or a previously unsuspected talent for high-jumping. Ponies often discovered new capabilities deep within themselves when a certain group of fillies were visibly at their endless (and still pointless) work, most of which related to hasty retreat.
Everypony in the settled zone had to find ways of coping with the ongoing activities of the Crusade. This included those ponies who had moved into town during the seemingly endless quest, and many of those had decided their best way of managing the problem was by moving right back out again. The fillies had few fans in town these days, barely had any adults about who would not begin pondering the national disaster relief budget when the trio came into view -- but there were some who loved them, and chief among those were the ponies employed by the town's rental and real estate agencies, as there was nothing quite like collecting a commission on the same property seven times in one season.
And now one of the trio had set her scooter wheels towards him.
Several ponies would have fainted. Multiple wills would have been updated. With different targets, the moving supply store would have seen another upsurge in sales, followed by Ryder kissing the portrait of the Crusaders he kept in a not-very-private place of near-worship.
Snowflake just shook his head slowly and took off, slowly flying east.
Behind him, a distinctive gasp rang out, and the wheels began to squeak again.
Under normal circumstances, anypony within three gallops would have picked up on her frustration. After all, Snowflake was flying slowly -- extremely so. A butterfly could have kept up with him without effort, and several had. He was currently giving a ride to several beetles who had decided a new form of public transportation had been passing by. Inchworms would have tossed out slowpoke jokes, and all of it should have been fully intolerable to a filly who was generally known for having exactly two speeds: All-Out Chaos and Just Crashed, But Give Me A Minute. On a normal day, the sheer mind-numbing pace of this would have broken her within two minutes and sent the grumbling filly off to inadvertently destroy something else.
But she was still following him. One wing flap, one answering wheel squeak from below. And Snowflake was getting sick of waiting for the fourth horseshoe to drop.
What was she doing? Was the latest Crusade designed to gain a mark in surveillance? If so, it was showing the same flaws as every other Crusader activity, although he was fairly certain the wheels had been noise-free when she'd started: the sheer land speeds the filly often achieved meant she went through a ridiculous amount of friction-burned lubricant. And how could -- no, would -- this go horribly wrong in the end?
He had no intention of personally finding out. If the game was shadowing...
The near-total-lack-of-pace had brought them out of town: still within the settled zone, but not too far away from the fringe. They were starting to pass through an open field, one with short grass, and he heard the squeaks shift: at a guess, his follower was moving to stay under the only cover available.
Snowflake looked up at the thickening cloud layer and shrugged, which offended several beetles. Put on just a touch more speed as he shifted his efforts towards the vertical, ascended until he went fully behind the white.
The squeaks came to a full stop. A tiny sigh, one designed to be overheard as seldom as possible (and denied every time it was caught), shifted a few small blades of grass. The sound of dirt being scuffed as the scooter was rotated, facing back towards town.
A whistling noise from overhead, as if something very large was plummeting through the atmosphere in a controlled-yet-extremely-rapid descent.
A gasp. A frantic attempt to accelerate from a standing start --
-- and too late.
There was a huge WHUMP! Dirt flew out in all directions. A group of very surprised beetles landed on the other side of the field. The ground itself turned into a reverberating instrument and held the note for a surprisingly long time.
Silence. If you discounted the rapid, panicked breathing to the immediate right.
Snowflake kept his gaze focused directly ahead, not looking at anything other than the treeline, and spoke to the air.
"I know this is out in the open," he softly said. "No trunks to hide behind. No buildings. Only one thing large enough to give you any hope of concealment at all."
The breathing found a way to accelerate. Its owner still couldn't manage the trick. After all, she was hiding...
"I am perfectly aware that you're in my shadow."
Another gasp, and a burst of wind against his right flank as her wings buzzed, pushing...
...gone, leaving a trail of disrupted grass and high-friction smoke in her wake.
Snowflake sighed.
"She's out of lubricant again," he softly told any beetles who might have hung around to file complaints, and took off once more, heading for home.
It was a market day, and that meant Snowflake was at work -- or at least in the middle of trying to line some more up. His tent had been erected early in the morning, with the sign posted in the usual spot: Day And Night Labor: No Job Too Big Or Too Heavy. And then he'd gone inside to wait.
Waiting had been most of what he'd done. Oh, a few clients had stopped by, mostly regulars, and those early in the morning. A field needed clearing, some construction supplies had to be delivered, one public works project required an extra set of hooves if it was ever going to be completed on time. He'd booked it all, worked out the schedule and calculated his income. But for the most part, he'd generally found himself sitting quietly within the light blue glow of the Sun-drenched canvas, waiting for somepony to approach. Anypony at all. And he knew the cause: the town had yet to become fully aware that she was no longer on his tail, and many ponies would remain reluctant to be anywhere near him until the news completely spread. Not that some ponies ever came all that close to him. Close enough to be overheard, yes, but too far away for anything else...
It was a slow day: those happened, and he had some bits put aside for such occasions. But knowing the cause was grating against his coat, and most of his free time was spent in trying not to blame the filly. Unlike many of Ponyville's inhabitants, he didn't believe all the damage the trio caused was deliberate. But there were times when he almost did start to feel they were a traveling chaos plague, and with the disease recently having visited his doorstep, the other sign (invisibly) hanging over his tent read QUARANTINE. And this despite the fact that the weekend was over, with the supposed virus currently isolated...
He tried to put it out of his mind, relax on his custom-made bench and just read for a while. But visions of orange blurs covered up the words, and he sighed to himself before once again checking the tent flaps, just in case there might be any hint of vibration from the approach of a client pony. Nothing. Just distant noises, some of which almost sounded like wheels squeaking. A memory he couldn't quite seem to get out of his head.
A glance at the canvas glow, noting the portion of highest intensity. Almost noon: far too many hours to go. Well, it was a thick book: for some strange reason, Twilight had felt he might enjoy a history of pegasi military tactics and for lack of anything better to do, he was failing to prove her right. His eyes went over the same page for the fourth time, frequently interrupted by still more pointless checks on the motionless tent flaps --
-- they shifted.
Not by much. Just enough to let a small body in, one which trotted in as if it owned every bit of space he was occupying and was about to announce an increase in the rent. Plopped down on the bench he kept for clients with a force which informed all the amazed spectators that cracking it from sheer impact would have been the most awesome possible result, and the total lack of damage was blamed on the universe's unwillingness to assist with a really good dramatic moment.
Purple eyes stared at him with something which was probably meant to be fierceness.
"I want --" She cut herself off, clearly deciding that wasn't forceful enough. "I'm hiring you."
He blinked.
"This is a school day," he softly said. "You're not supposed to be at the market right now."
Bluntly, "Miss Cheerilee let us out early."
He did not lean forward. He did not set his chin or narrow his eyes. He simply looked at her and waited.
"She let me out early."
More waiting. There was a little sweat in her coat, but she'd had that when she'd entered.
"...for lunch." With a surge of defiance, "And I can eat lunch wherever I want to! As long as I'm back in time --"
"-- you want to hire me."
She nodded.
"For what?" Ponies generally booked Snowflake to move things. Haul. Push. Every so often, somepony would look at his sheer mass and falsely perceive violence waiting on a signal to be unleashed, a belief which generally left them trying to figure out some extremely elaborate tail knots. With the Crusaders... the first thought was covering up a disaster, possibly one beyond the scope of what they caused every week.
Admittedly, that could potentially turn into something close to full-time employment.
She stared at him across the small center table. Her breaths were sharp and shallow. Feathers vibrated at her sides.
"You don't have that much time before you're missed," Snowflake quietly pointed out. "Even at the speeds you get on that scooter, you'll need a few minutes to hurry back --"
"-- you can fly."
It had been a statement, and an exceptionally blunt one. But there had been other things riding on those three words. Anger. Frustration. Self-loathing...
A simple "Yes," with most of the shock removed before emergence.
"Teach me."
...longing.
She was staring at him again. Many ponies did that, and so many had their gazes ultimately land where hers had gone.
"Your wings," she starkly said. "They're... like mine."
A slow head shake, one forever tinged with a regret he could never completely shed. "I doubt that."
"They're small," she insisted, using a tone which suggested it was possible he'd just never noticed and she felt the words were doing him a courtesy by pointing it out. "And you fly. You fly anyway. And you're good. You were at the Wonderbolts training camp..."
"That was just --" trying to prove myself, over and over no matter how many times I've done it before because some ponies still can't believe "-- something to do. I didn't join. I couldn't. My --" and he stopped, sensing that talking about flying too much in front of her was exactly the wrong thing to do.
No -- remembering.
But she was persistent. "Your what?"
He sighed. "My techniques," he softly admitted. "I'm... not very good at them, and I never will be. I can help a little in a group effort, but I can't manage all that much on my own. The Wonderbolts use a lot of techniques in their performances. The lightning streaks, storm cloud contrails... those are extremely advanced, beyond what I'll ever be able to do. So they thanked me for coming, and then they sent me home." Spitfire had given him the dismissal personally, directly told him she'd been both surprised and impressed by how fast and maneuverable he was -- but without the techniques, none of that mattered. Snowflake had known that going in. And he'd still attended.
Just to prove I could fly with them.
Just to prove I can fly.
"But you fly. And I -- it's been years, everypony else is flying and I --" Boldly, "-- I just don't have the right teacher! Sure, I could figure it out on my own, but who has that kind of time? I've got -- stuff to do. With my friends. So I thought, maybe one good lesson, from somepony who's -- like me. Whose wings are like mine..."
"Stand up?" It was not an order.
She still took it as one, and treated it as he'd expected her to: with resentment. "I'm not leaving. I've got time and I'm still hiring --"
"-- I'm not sending you away." The words surprised him. "I just need you to stand up right now --" he had to force the next words, and hoped none of the effort had been visible "-- and then I would appreciate it if you would flare your wings out for me. Full extension, maximum lift angle. And keep them that way."
He was amazed he'd been able to get it all out.
'Go ahead, freak, show us what you've got! Or the empty space from everything you don't!'
The flush of embarrassment was beginning to discolor the orange coat, and mere pride was not enough to push it back. "I don't see why I have to --"
"You said your wings are like mine," Snowflake gently cut in. "I don't think they are, not from the way I've seen you move before this. But to prove it one way or the other, I have to take a longer look. If you don't want me to... I'll understand. Believe me, Scootaloo, I won't hold that against you. You can trot out of here right now and we'll never mention this again. But if you really want me to teach you... I can't do that without knowing what I'm working with."
Slowly, she pushed herself off the bench. Made an effort to stop all four knees from knocking, one he knew she was praying he hadn't seen. Removed her saddlebags, braced all her legs into a position of angry defiance, flared out her wings in a single fierce movement which did nothing to push the hurt away.
He did not approach, he did not touch: he had no right. He simply inspected her from that moderate distance with the practiced eye of a pony who had done so too many times before, with so many conducted from the shadowed corners of a schoolyard while fillies and colts his own age laughed and played aerial games chosen with the purpose of excluding him. And saw exactly what he'd expected to. What he'd hoped for.
"Mantle is standard," he murmured. "Lesser and regular coverts completely undamaged. No scapulars absent. Extant muscle development is a little more oriented on lateral movement than vertical, that's from the scooter, but it's not at an interfering level and might actually help with certain efforts..."
No. Not like him at all and for that, he silently thanked Celestia and Luna both.
"You're normal, Scootaloo." And the words made him smile. "If I had to guess --" and it was a very expert one "-- you're just late to your growth spurt, and not all that late to begin with. Maybe a few moons or so at the most. As for your classmates -- some ponies just start earlier than others. I know a mixed school is less likely to have classes on pegasus wing development, but your parents should have talked to you about this --"
Her eyes went fierce again, and the intensity almost made him pull back. "Normal? Flying is normal!"
He took a slow breath, tried to make his words even. "So is wing development. Nopony starts at full span. Even infants are short for their overall body size: they mostly take off on the power of their Surges. And there's also flight feathers. You have a few, and that's a good sign to begin with -- but not enough. Have your wings been itching lately? If so, the bulk of their mass is starting to come in. You'll also go through some molting as you lose some of the junior pinions, and you'll feel like you want to preen yourself constantly --"
There was just a sliver of purple visible through narrowed lids. "I. Can't. Fly."
"You didn't answer me," Snowflake gently insisted. "Any itching? Preening urges?"
"So what?" And it was halfway to a shout, with the internal agony making every letter into an individual scream. "It's not happening right! Not when everypony else is having it happen! Not before, not first! I should be flying, I'm sick of waiting and trying and -- and this should have happened already, everypony else, this has to happen now!"
He waited for the trembling to stop, the filly and tent flaps both, and wondered how much of the sound had made it past the canvas.
"You fly," she nearly whispered, and he wondered if it was all she still had strength for. "I was watching you. You can go fast when you want to. You hover. I was following you, taking notes, but I couldn't make any of it work... How? How are you flying at all?"
The only thing he could do was be honest with her. "I'm... strong." And that was very nearly the whole of it. "I have less to push with -- so I push that much harder. But I'm --" and she had to hear it, no matter how hard the words were to say, she needed them "-- not normal, Scootaloo, and you are. I don't have a choice. My --"
"-- make me strong."
He stared at her, red eyes on purple. She refused to blink.
"Make me strong like you," Scootaloo said as her legs straightened into absolute rebellion. Her tail, which hadn't gotten the message, drooped from the weight of despair.
Slowly, oh so slowly, Snowflake got up from his bench.
It took a while. There was a lot to move.
He felt her eyes on him, going over every muscle, every bulging piece of internal power, all the things he'd had to do, and he could see her struggling not to pull back, to retreat from the different, somepony who seemed barely part of the herd at all as he reached his full height and took a deep breath, mass greater than any other stallion's seemingly expanding in all directions --
-- she took a step back. Only a small one, and the movement had been completely involuntary: he knew both things from the quickly-suppressed look of shock on her face. But the fear had been there. It was easy for him to recognize, because it so often was.
"This is what you want?" This time, the near-whisper was his. "To never fit in with any flock or herd? To have ponies staring everywhere you go, laughing behind their hooves while hoping you hear them, ready to retreat the moment you turn around because they're so sure you can't follow? To know nopony will ever want to be with you because there isn't a single pony in all of Equestria who's attracted to this, that you can barely find ponies willing to tolerate your presence most of the time --"
"-- you..." The word itself was trembling. "...you're with Fluttershy... all the time... everypony thinks..."
They think the freaks belong together. He knew. He'd heard those carefully-pitched words too. "She's a client." A sister. "She trains me so I can look after the cottage when she's on missions. That's all. It's not romance, and it never will be. I came to ground because I didn't fit in with the flock. I don't fit in with the herd either. Anywhere. And I did this to myself, Scootaloo, on purpose -- and the only thing I gained was flight." As gentle as he could make the words, "Is that worth what you're going to lose?"
Her breaths were deep this time, shuddering, and she was trying to conceal all of it, trying to make herself seem immune to the fear while fully locked within it. Lying to herself without pulling off the con.
"I... I have friends." Defiant again, her weapon of choice against the world. "They'll stay my friends no matter what I look like. I don't care about stupid kissing and dumb romance and all that frilly gross adult stuff! I want -- the sky."
"But your wings --"
"-- teach me to fly. Make me strong."
And the unspoken words hung in the air between them: 'Or I'll do it myself.'
The trembling stopped, and she simply stared at him, waiting.
Everything in the tent was blue-tinged: it was the nature of light through the canvas. Everything except those purple eyes.
He settled back onto his bench.
"You're hiring me."
She nodded.
"So you can pay?"
She looked truly insulted, then bent her head down for her discarded saddlebags, rummaged around with her mouth for a while. Several pieces of metal eventually landed on the little table.
Snowflake looked them over. Most were dirty. Several showed the seeming corrosion which indicated they had been in the dirt for a long time. Others displayed the sort of mild discoloration generally found when a bit had been sitting in a body of water for a while -- say, a fountain. Others had just been trod on. Repeatedly. And put together, they were just about enough to hire him for just under seven minutes.
For one glorious moment, he saw himself in the mayor's office, informing the local government that he had just been put in a position where he could take one of the Crusaders out of the chaos mix and all he was asking for such a sterling service to all ponykind was twenty percent of the town repair and disaster relief savings over the training period. Then he pictured the mayor countering by asking him to guarantee it through personally paying twenty percent of any extra damages during that same time, and it would turn out that Scootaloo had been the moderating influence.
The vision broke up into a storm of swirling bankruptcy forms, and Snowflake took a long moment to question the state of his sanity before proceeding into the next part.
"I need you to read this -- " he dipped his head under the table, brought out a dusty standard training contract "-- and have your parents sign it."
Every part of her face went hard. "I'm hiring you. Not any parents. Me."
"You're underage. If you sign the contract, it can't be enforced --"
"-- I don't break my word." And that was anger again. "I don't care what some stupid contract says. I care what I say, and I said I want this."
So: underpaid and legally under the table. Perfect. "Read it," Snowflake sighed. "All the way through. And then you can sign."
He spotted her eyes skimming over the text within the first sentence. "Ack-know-ledge that muscle training is the pro-cess of causing mul-ti-ple small in-jur -- oh, come on! This thing goes on forever!"
"It's four pages."
"Like I said, forever!" Her eyes moved faster than ever, mouth flipping to the next page well before the mind coordinating all of it could take in a single word. The sequence was repeated twice more. "There! I read it! Plus I understood all of it! I'm signing it -- um... do you have a quill?"
He passed it over. The result wasn't exactly recognizable as mouthwriting, although some interesting visions could have been found in the central ink blot.
"Okay," she confidently declared after nosing the paperwork back to his side of the table. "You're hired. And that means I'm your boss. So that means I get to tell you what to do. And I say we start right now --"
"-- after school."
"But I'm your boss!"
"And I have exclusive domain over setting the training schedule."
"What gives you the right to do that?"
"Page three."
She blinked. Snatched the contract back. Flipped to the relevant page and, judging from this particular set of eye movements, registered seven whole words. "Oh, for... fine. Where are we doing this? And when -- exactly?"
He considered. "Remember that field from yesterday?" She did something which was assuredly not blushing, nodded. "We'll need some open space. Meet me there an hour after school lets out. After you've done your homework. Bring your scooter and oil up the wheels." Another nod. "And... wait a minute." He located a blank sheet of paper, started scribbling.
"What are you doing?"
Snowflake carefully put the quill down. "Notes. For Miss Cheerilee and your parents. So they'll know where you were and what you'll be doing. The first is just in case you're late --"
She stood up.
"I," she declared, "am never late." Glanced up at the canvas, took quick note of the strongest glow's position. "See you in the field!" And gone.
Snowflake watched the tent flaps sway for a while.
So. Training her for flight. Teaching somepony with normal (if very slightly late in growth spurt) wings, somepony where a few of his methods might assist -- there was nothing wrong with being a little stronger -- but to go the full route would likely limit her ultimate capabilities. Along with so many other things.
Strong like him. There was no way he was ever going to let that happen.
Snowflake thought about the ponies who had hired him for strength training in the past, mostly athletes looking for an extra edge. Considered the sheer number who had quit partway through the program because they were no longer capable of seeing the gain on the other side of the labor, never understanding the cost in sweat and deep aches and actual effort required to obtain what they'd just decided was never truly wanted in the first place...
He grinned, and gave her a week before she quit. If he was on his game, three days, with the final one only counted because she would have to drag herself into the tent just long enough to demand her money back.
But...
...the Crusade goes on...
No. She would quit. Oh, if she somehow stuck with it for any real period of time, anything over a few hours, he would make sure to give her training which would do some good -- but to be like him... that would never happen, not as long as he had the strength to stop it. And the best way to freeze her in her own hoofprints was to show her the first part of the price.
She'll quit.
She had to.
It was for her own good.