It was a long and exhausting day for all of the cadets. Once dinner was over, they all headed back to the barracks. Two ponies in particular were looking forward to a long-awaited rest.
“Why did you have us go through the obstacle course again?” Scootaloo asked.
“It was only open for today, due to all the preparation and ponies they need to run it,” Blue Yonder explained. “And I thought we needed to go through it again. You have to admit, you did a lot better the second time through.”
“Yeah, but I still felt the same after we were done too,” Scootaloo retorted.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” Blue Yonder said. “I just think we need to push ourselves a little so we can get better, but I would never have you hurt yourself over it. I was certain you could handle it one more time.”
“I guess you’re right,” Scootaloo sighed. “Still, I can’t wait to go to bed.”
Blue Yonder nodded in agreement and they finally reached the barracks. Scootaloo immediately climbed into her bed after removing her flight suit. Blue Yonder was also getting better at removing hers—now it only took about two minutes and a lot less struggling.
Everypony else went about their nightly routines. Scootaloo was content with just lying on her bed. Then she looked at the foot of the bed and noticed the cabinet sitting there. Suddenly, it piqued her interest and she got up to go investigate.
“What are you doing?” Snapshot asked, noticing that Scootaloo was now on top of the cabinet.
“Silverwings said that he found a ‘secret compartment’ last night in these cabinets and that there was some cool stuff in them,” Scootaloo explained.
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” Blue Yonder exclaimed as she put her book down.
“Don’t you realize how filthy that would be?” Lavender snapped, but Scootaloo ignored her.
“Ah-ha!” Scootaloo exclaimed once she found a loose piece of wood and then lifted it up. “Cool, a couple of bouncing balls.”
She took out a rubber ball about the size of her head and passed it to Blue Yonder. Scootaloo returned to the floor with the other one and started bouncing it off of her head. The other mares stared at her in amazement.
“I’m going to go see what’s in mine!” Snapshot said as she flew over to the cabinet on the opposite side of the room.
“What? Really!” Lavender exclaimed, watching all the other ponies in the room climbing on top of the furniture.
“Aaaw,” Snapshot moaned. “This one doesn’t have anything in it at all.”
“This one has some old history textbooks in it,” another mare said, rather confused.
“Really, let me see those?” Blue Yonder asked and then flipped through the pages of the large books. “Wow! These are way out of date. They end at least fifty years before Princess Luna returned, and there isn’t a single mention of the Crystal Empire.”
“Come on, Lavender, what’s in yours?” Snapshot asked.
“You don’t seriously expect me to crawl up there to look for something in a dirty hole, do you?” Lavender snapped.
“Please,” Snapshot pleaded. “You got to be the one to do it. It's your cabinet after all.”
Lavender looked at all the other mares in the room. Each were just as expectant and curious as Snapshot. Finally, she gave in.
“Fine,” Lavender sighed.
She then started muttering something under her breath while she flew to the top of her own dresser.
“Huh?” Lavender said, looking into the compartment. “It’s a box.”
She lifted a small cardboard box out of the cabinet and returned to the ground. She took off the lid so that everypony could look. Inside was a stack of pictures.
“Wow,” Snapshot said in awe. “Some of these are really old. You can tell by the color, material and resolution in the photographs.”
She was right. As they flipped through the photos, they noticed that the ones on top were in black and white and slowly changed to more vibrant colors. Each picture had a line of ponies in it, but they were always different.
“Wait, these are all cadets from the Wonderbolt Academy,” Lavender stated once they found a picture where the ponies were wearing flight suits similar to their own.
“Hey look, it’s Colonel Spitfire!” Blue Yonder exclaimed. “Look at that manestyle, that’s so thirty years ago.”
It was true. The picture did show Spitfire with a very frizzy and proofed-out mane. Scootaloo couldn’t help but think about her old teacher, Cheerilee. It was the same style from a picture she once showed the class when talking about cutie marks. And seeing that manestyle on Spitfire yielded the same laughter that Scootaloo remembered from when Cheerilee showed the picture to both her and Sweetie Belle after they had joined the class.
They continued to browse the photographs. They found many other prominent members of the Wonderbolts—some of them with much more subdued manes. They finally found the picture that Scootaloo was eager to see.
“It’s Rainbow Dash!” She shouted.
“I wonder who that green pony is right next to her,” Blue Yonder said.
Scootaloo gave a nervous chuckle as she looked at the pony in question who had her left foreleg around Rainbow Dash’s shoulders. Scootaloo knew, all too well, the story between her idol and her idol’s partner at the academy. Thankfully, nopony pursued the subject and they moved on to the next picture.
“It seems that it’s some sort of tradition for the cadets to take a picture of their group and leave it in the box,” Blue Yonder said once they looked at the last picture. “Providing that they find it, of course.”
“Ooo! I know what we’re doing tomorrow!” Snapshot exclaimed and she grabbed her camera and mini-tripod.
“Do we have too?” Lavender complained.
“Yeah!” Snapshot said. “That way we’ll always be here in a way.”
“Great,” Lavender said sarcastically.
This piqued Scootaloo’s curiosity again.
‘It’s almost as though she doesn’t want anything to do with the Wonderbolts at all,’ she thought.
The mares continued to fiddle with the items found in their dressers, or at least the pictures and the rubber balls—the textbooks lay forgotten in a corner near Blue Yonder’s bed. Soon, however, they needed to go to bed as Lieutenant What’s-his-name called for lights out.
***
Spitfire opened the door to her private quarters with a smile on her face. She had just returned from a pleasant evening stroll around the compound. As she was passing the barracks, she heard some laughter come from the section occupied by the new cadet mares. Listening closely confirmed her suspicions for the cause of that laughter.
‘It seems that they’ve finally found the items hidden in the cabinets,’ Spitfire had thought; particularly when she heard some comments about the manestyle she used to have when she was a cadet.
More than once, Spitfire had thought of getting that box in order to remove that picture of her. She never did, though. It would insult the friends she had made back then. Besides, it also showed that Spitfire was at least a little equine, and not just the fiery commander who used to be the leading flyer in the Wonderbolts.
Spitfire’s countenance changed as she climbed into her bed. Major Soarin’s report that day weighed heavily on her mind—or rather, one item in particular. The obstacle course was one of the more demanding trainings they did, and ponies have been known to be blown off course or need some minor medical attention afterwards. It usually wasn’t very alarming to hear of an issue there, but what happened with Scootaloo that day troubled her.
‘Things seem to be getting worse,’ Spitfire thought before drifting off to sleep.