Confeatheracy of Dunces
Chapter 5 - "Lead Me On (Because I Don't Have a Clue)"
Growing up in Cloudsdale, Rainbow’s lineage virtually had determined that she would be one of the greatest flyers in Equestria during her prime time. Her father; Rainbow Strike, had been a minor league cloudball champion until he’d resigned in protest over questionable changes to the league’s ethical code and had since been Cloudsdale’s weather manager. Her mother, Firefly, was even more reason for why Rainbow had virtually flown out of her womb as opposed to being born conventionally; the mare had been a Wonderbolt reservist herself and could have made the team someday had she not gone and been married before regulations against married ponies being allowed in the Wonderbolts had been lifted.
As their only foal, Rainbow had come into the world with both all the love and the expectations of her parents, but they only set the bar as high as they believed their daughter could truly achieve. A bar they couldn’t set higher after she had only been the tender age of eight and, in the defense of a weaker pony she later befriended against some hardheaded bullies, smoked them all in a race by performing a legendary Sonic Rainboom. While she had not been the first to do so, the Sonic Rainboom being a trademark of the Prism Family bloodline which Dash inherited from her father’s side, it was only one pony every few generations of the Prism heritage that could pull it off even in their prime…at least until young Rainbow Dash immediately proved to be a flyer of such caliber that even the instructors at the flight camp were beneath her. While this had the unfortunate side effect of forever establishing her ego at a large enough size to be one of her major faults later in life, it had also given her the confidence at that young stage of life she needed to aim for the most vaunted place in the world as far as she cared: a spot on the Wonderbolts.
But in forever surpassing any degree of expectation her parents could realistically set for their child, Rainbow in turn unintentionally became the one who she had to prove herself to. Her insecurity about not living up to her own expectations, her ego of course having no small part in this false confidence streak at times, tended to get the better of her, especially after having met the five ponies who had become her closest confidants and, in one way or another, all had played key roles in even getting her to her spot as a Wonderbolt Reserve. And while Rainbow’s parents were thrilled at how much their daughter had accomplished at such a young age, the bridges she’d had to burn along the way still ate at her conscience in the back of her brain, her insecurity now forever bolstered by the looks of anger and betrayal from Gilda Griffin and Lightning Dust, two individuals Rainbow had been forced to cut ties with in the name of staying true to her real friends. Someday, she hoped, she could repair those friendships (and maybe they, in turn, would pull the sticks out of their plots because they were kind of jerks even when they had been on good terms with Rainbow), but until then all she could towards achieving that goal was to eventually surpass her mother and become a full Wonderbolt. And then marry Soarin’ because he was pretty damn hot, but while he had totally been hitting on her at the wedding of Twilight’s brother and sister-in-law, she needed to prove herself worthy to him now as well as herself.
And right now, she barely could hover for even five minutes after a week or so of therapy. In comparison, Cheerilee was doing aerial loops and other basic airborne tricks like a pro – and she wasn’t a naturally born pegasus! That worrying thought bellied an even worse concern: What if Rainbow wasn’t able to be as good a flyer as she had been before the lightning strike? Sure, she’d still keep her place as a Wonderbolt Reserve no matter what, her self-confidence dictated she would regain that much flying ability, but the difference between “reservist” and “main squadron flyer was like comparing how Twilight Sparkle could organize a party…to how Pinkie Pie could organize a party.
“Damn, sis!” exclaimed Silver as his sister touched down in front of the schoolhouse. “You really have quite taken to this whole flying thing, haven’t you?”
“Well, I don’t recall anypony saying this old pony couldn’t learn new tricks!” boasted Cheerilee with pride.
“Pity the same can’t be said for any of our students,” snarked Dusty. “Present company aside, of course.”
“Yeah, well, I guess if Cheerilee’s point was to prove that if she can learn how to do the basics of flight, then I should be able to be back in the air full-time in no time, right?” asked Dash, hiding her sense of dread about what else she could interpret.
“Yes, you should,” agreed Cheerilee. “Especially since Twilight has told me how much you like to boast about your accolades that came with being born to a pair of extremely athletic ponies and, much to my brother and sister-in-law’s chagrin, already have been eating very healthy as well.”
“But wouldn’t rushing things also be a bad thing?” countered Dash. “After all, if anypony should know how doing things too fast can make a problem worse instead of better, it’s me, right?”
“Just get in the schoolhouse,” nickered Cheerilee, to which Rainbow snickered past and into the door. But when Cheerilee tried to follow, she found Silver suddenly blocking her way.
“How many?” he asked in a stern tone.
“Huh? What are you talk-“
“How. Many.” He intoned again with slightly less patience.
Cheerilee sighed, no point in hiding it. “Two.”
Dusty, on the other hoof, was totally out of context. “Huh? Two what now?”
The doctor just grumbled. “By which my sister means three bottles of cider were consumed by her last night as she was doing something I thought she’d gotten over after college…or so she had informed me.” He turned back to look at his sibling with worry. “Cheeri, you know how easily you go downhill once you start going back into these binges of yours.”
The schoolteacher looked down and pawed at the ground nervously. “I know, Silver, but…while I know Rainbow trusts me- no, all three of us to get her back in the air, I’m the one who has to do the actual teaching and quite frankly, I wouldn’t be able to do the things I just did in the air myself if I hadn’t raided the cache last night.”
“So you do have a cider cache? Or is it more than one?” Cheerilee kept avoiding Silver’s gaze, to which he could only sigh again. “I’ll be perfectly honest, sis: I was surprised alcohol wasn’t involved the last time Dusty and I came up and you had wings. But now that you have wings and started drinking those bottles again? Even if I didn’t have a medical degree, I know it’s only going to make you crash harder than you did last time if you keep this up.”
“I know, I know, frankly I think both Rainbow and I were aware that I wasn’t really going to do much good since I hadn’t really known the sensation of flight, which now that I have flown, I can certainly tell you changes everything about how I need to teach her in order to get her through therapy. Plus, she really should be improving faster than she is given her history; hopefully that will kick in before a repeat of my last set of wings happens. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start that ball rolling.”
Dusty said nothing as Silver let Cheerilee enter the schoolhouse to do her job. Once that had happened, though, she had to investigate. “Silver, does Cheerilee…does she have a drinking problem?”
Instead of answering, he simply took her head in one of his hooves and brought her in close for a muzzle-to-muzzle kiss. “I’ll tell you later, it’s…complicated, and not in the least what you think is going on, I can assure you of that.”
“So, what do we want to do today?” asked Sweetie, quickly adding “Besides getting our cutie marks, if it’s okay with you girls I wanna just do something fun as friends. Crusading for cutie marks is cool and all, but I think we need to give it a rest for a while.”
“Are you sure?” said Apple Bloom. “Ah’m not sure we’ve gone through the list yet.”
In response, Sweetie levitated over a thick book – the effort making her furrow her brow as her latent natural birthright was still developing in her young age – and let her mental grip release the book while it was still hovering. The tome hit the ground with a loud thud in front of Apple Bloom, the cover bearing the title Cutie Mark Acquisition Ideas. “Yes, we’ve done everything.”
“Even th’ Chrono Jump?” The yellow filly opened the book and took out a paper that had been clipped to one of the pages that indicated some kind of dance routine – named the “Chrono Jump” for whatever reason - that started with a hop to the left, then a skip to the right and a jump in place.
“Yes, and then we did the Chrono Jump again, too!” said Sweetie, rearing on her hind legs and putting her hooves on her hips to look a bit more imposing. However, she only accomplished throwing her center of balance off, her knees buckling in tightly and her arms flailing only to accomplish preventing her from falling forward and instead landing on her backside.
“Ya always had problems with th’ pelvic thrust, now that I remember the last three times we tried it. It just drove you crazy.”
“Gaaaah!” cried out Scootaloo, who had been off sulking at the window and evidently had no more tolerance for the Chrono Jump discussion. Walking over to her compatriots, she jabbed a hoof to the paper. “Now if you…” she glanced over to Apple Bloom, then Sweetie, before continuing, “look closely, you’ll see how you’ve been doing it wrong the whole time!”
“So you wanna do it again, then?” snarked Apple Bloom. She immediately found the Chrono Jump sheet instantly scrunch up into a crumpled ball aglow with a mint green aura that launched into her head and bounced off without much fuss. “Hey, it’s better than nothing, right?”
“Not as good as how Rainbow promised to have been spending time with me this summer,” nickered the pegasus, turning away to go sulk at the window some more. “I don’t blame her for not holding her promise, wasn’t her fault for the storm or that lightning bolt, but it seems all her time is dedicated to either her flying therapy with Ms. Cheerilee, or work!”
“Wait, work?” Apple Bloom was surprised. “But, Ah thought she couldn’t work because she couldn’t fly t’ push clouds around or stuff?”
Scoot shook her head. “No, that’s probably the worst part, moreso than even not being able to fly: She has to do paperwork.”
Twilight groaned. As the local tetrarchy representative of the country’s government, her various duties as a princess required various things to have to pass her approval. Things like the weather plans down to the exact day of weather team operations.
As written by weather manager Rainbow Dash.
If there had been anything Rainbow had somehow gained from being struck by magic lightning other than flight amnesia, it had sadly been not a significant improvement in her hoofwriting.
Maybe Cheerilee can teach her better writing, wondered Twilight as she tried to figure out what ‘shoot tweety caffeinated mounds dover sony hale’ could have possibly been intended to be, and not the sky kind, either…
“Scoot, we know how much you value her being your big sister, given you’re an only child,” said Sweetie in an attempt to comfort her friend. “But there’s nothing making this different from, say, Rainbow going off to Wonderbolts Camp a while back.”
“Wonderbolts Academy,” corrected Scootaloo. “And it is different because she and I had already planned ahead for her being gone that week far in advance by a few months!”
Apple Bloom raised an eyebrow. “But AJ told me she’d only got the acceptance letter minutes before taking off for her house to stuff that one gym bag full a’ toilets she needed. An’ no offense, Scoot, but if a pony needs t’ take multiple toilets and nothing else to some training day camp, ya gotta question her sanity.”
“I think Applejack said toiletries, things like toothbrushes, color crayons, and other basic health necessities.” corrected Sweetie Belle. “Rarity needs a whole ‘wheeled amore’ luggage…thing…larger than possibly Princess Celestia full of toiletries whenever she travels. For Rainbow? I figure she’d need only a toothbrush and toothpaste and maybe soap on a rope.”
“Why ‘on a rope’ exactly?”
“Because she wouldn’t want to drop it.”
Apple Bloom looked slightly horrified. “Sweetie, did you just say that-“
“What? What did I say? Isn’t it obvious that a pegasus using a raincloud shower wouldn’t want to drop his or her soap? It’s a long way down to the surface and soap doesn’t fly so much as it would fall through the cloud and plummet down.” The tiny unicorn then put a hoof to her chin in ponderance. “Or does it?”
That’s it!”
“What’s ‘it’?” asked Apple Bloom and Sweetie in unison, with a slight touch of wariness in their voices. While none of the three fillies would admit that any ideas they had come up with were bad in their own eyes – at least until they inevitably failed in the execution attempt – the non-winged fillies were in mutual agreement that Scootaloo’s ideas tended to have an even lower success rate along with usually having the messiest end results.
“I’ll take flying therapy with Rainbow Dash!” The young mare beamed happily, certain she’d worked out how to make Rainbow be able to live up to the promise of big sister time by simply making the therapy be their activities.
Her fellow two crusaders merely exchanged worried glances and wondered what they would be covered with at the end of this latest escapade. Apple Bloom made a mental bet she’d have to clean chalk dust out of her fur. Sweetie meanwhile was making plans to get high strength taffy remover to clean out her mane.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a much different kind of class was in session.
“Now hold still, dear,” said Rarity while levitating an uncomfortably large number of needles and pins…as far as her subject was concerned, at least. “You act like you’ve never had a fancy suit tailored for you.”
“Uhhh…nope,” replied Big Mac. He was perfectly honest, too. When it came to the Apple Family, formal attire was usually a luxury even for the mares among the farmers. He himself, though? Few stallions were as big as him, so even standard sizing measurements were beneath his mass. To him, the only thing he ever felt the need to wear was his trademark yoke, for whatever reason his immediate family all wore some kind of accessory, and since he’d inherited the thing from his late father, he only felt it was right to wear it as much as possible. Oh, and also on occasion his Ponytones sweater – which Rarity had also made – when the choir group did their usual performances during the cooler autumn months. But, much to his chagrin, Rarity was going all the way in helping him woo Cheerilee. And apparently that meant not only getting another article of clothing made, but it had to come with pants, too!
“I don’t see why not, at least not until now. You’re the brother of one of the closest confidants of a princess, after all, and if I could get Applejack to put on something nice every once in a while plus your other little sister Apple Bloom to do the same for Cadance’s wedding, it won’t kill you to put on something nice for when you’re ready to give Cheerilee the best night of her life!”
“Ah understand, but…pants?”
“Oh for Celestia’s sake…” grumbled Rarity, who only half-unintentionally jabbed a pin into the suit taking shape on the red stallion a bit too hard, causing him to wince in pain a little. “If my own mother can get around wearing pants with ease, then I can make you a pair of trousers that will feel so comfortable that you’ll forget you’re even wearing them! Besides, it’s not like you can complain about a free suit: I’m doing this au gratis partly because your sister happens to be virtually a sister to me as well as a friend, but also partly because having your measurements for a stallion your size will do wonders for Carousel Boutique in being all-inclusive towards stallions and mares who seek dresses, no matter their size!”
“Er…Ah’ll take yer word for it. Though Ah don’t see th’ need fer a suit, since Ah’m pretty sure Cheerilee won’t take to me tryin’ to be fancy when Celestia knows Ah don’t-“
“Oh, but you must!” she exclaimed, taking both hooves and putting them on Big Mac’s cheeks. “It’s virtually every mare’s dream to have a big, mighty stallion in a fancy suit sweep them off their hooves and off to utter bliss! Well, mine’s a bit more elaborate, admittedly, but it’s more or less the same, d’ accord?”
“Ah’d bet,” he said nonchalantly, eager to get this nightmare over with. Unfortunately, he realized too late that he’d just given her permission to extend this delusional moment for much, much longer.
“Oh, you have no idea, Big Macintosh!” chimed Rarity whimsically. She began cavorting around as if dancing or something, Mac noted, and…was her magic lighting up? Not daring to move lest he damage the unfinished suit, he could only warily look around as the enchantments spewing out of her horn began to drape a tapestry of illusion all around, transforming Carousel Boutique into some kind of dark, evil looking cave. Suddenly, a fancy dress shot in from what he guessed was a closet and somehow attached itself to Rarity, who then promptly collapsed onto a chaise longue that also had shot into the room, only from the other direction. “It would be just like the grandest fantasies of yore: the fair maiden, captured in a trance by a hideous haridelle!”
Just then, the image of some horrible mockery of an alicorn appeared. This was no pony, however, as instead of fur, the creature was clad in gnarled, black organic armor of some kind, its core wrapped in what looked like a jade-hued saddle, from which transparent blue wings were attached though they were tattered as if Rarity’s cat had gotten too close to them. From both its head and hindquarters were the suggestions of a mane and tail, but they were of a sea green shade and hung limply, like rotting seaweed. Atop the monster’s head sat a ghastly, contorted shape like that of a tree branch, right behind it a laughably small crown with four spikes on it that could possibly be mistaken for tiny antennae. But most telling of all was how the creature’s limbs ended with chunks apparently cut out as if from a hole puncher, like the creature was rotting away.
Quite frankly, Big Mac wasn’t so much alarmed at being so close to a fake Queen Chrysalis as he was wondering if this was at all accurate to the real one, and his sister’s recounting of meeting the changeling queen had been far kinder. Which didn’t make any sense at all given Applejack certainly wouldn’t have lied about describing something as hideous as Chrysalis.
Rarity, having “fainted” onto her couch, kept on talking, there being no brakes on the Rarity’s fantasy train. “Yes, the damsel has no hope of being saved, until her gallant hero rises to the occasion and bests the foul rapscallion, banishing it to the very depths of Tartarus itself!’
Big Mac had been paying too much attention to Rarity when he suddenly realized that “Chrysalis” had been sent flying through the air, her facial expression unchanged in an almost comedic manner as the magic caricature slammed back down into the ground and exploded in a cloud of magic dust. Turning to see Rarity’s hero, he saw…Spike the Dragon.
“Yes, I’ll be the one to save you, Rarity!” the young drake boasted proudly.
Evidently, that had not been the words Rarity had been expecting to hear, as she sat bolt upright from her couch and the dark cave of fantasy dissolving away instantly. “Oh, uh, Spike! What a surprise!” she said, a slight blush of embarrassment at having shown something she did admittedly know as being silly to a baby dragon, who not too long ago had been more of a monster toward her (albeit he couldn’t have helped it at the time) than Chrysalis ever had. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Oh, Twilight said I could have the rest of the day off, so I decided to come help you!”
“I see! Well then...I, er,” the unicorn replied, slipping back into a more casual tone of voice. “As a matter of fact, I could use your help! See those bolts of fabric over there? If you could be a darling and haul those upstairs for me, that would be fabulous.”
“But of course, your prettifulness!” Spike bowed, then rushed off to do the assigned task. Naturally, each bolt was about three times wide as he was tall, and fairly heavy as well, so he quickly found the only means to get them upstairs was to haul them one at a time, slowly.
“Are you sure about that, Rarity?” asked Big Mac, not wanting to be left standing around in an unfinished suit for any longer than necessary.
“Big Mac, believe me, I know Spike’s help to anypony other than Twilight can be…disastrous, but at the same time, as long as Spike doesn’t get anywhere near my plumbing he does alright by me as well. But how rude of me, you still need a suit!”
“That makes one of us…” the farm stallion groaned.
The next day saw Rainbow waking up back in the confines of her own home. And boy was she happy to be back in the clouds. Her therapy with Cheerilee had been going great so far, the previous day having helped the recovering pegasus get enough strength that she could now get back into her own house instead of having to be a deadbeat at Fluttershy’s place.
Yeah, I love Fluttershy to bits, almost like an older sister who is only older by age, Rainbow thought as she stepped into the shower, letting the warm raindrops from the replaceable cloud ceiling – more efficient than the normal showerheads needed by unicorns and earth ponies - run down her fur and stretched feathers. But damn if I can’t stand that stupid rabbit of hers, who she treats like a deaf, significantly younger brother. Admittedly, Rainbow had her own surrogate sibling with Scootaloo, but unlike the rascally rabbit, the younger pegasus never did anything that would get on Rainbow’s nerves.
About half an hour later, Rainbow found herself wondering if she was going to be eating those words when she found more than her mail waiting at her mailbox.
“So, can I? Can I can I can I?” begged the orange filly, bouncing up and down like a ball of energized fur and feathers – like a tiny Pinkie Pie except orange and with wings.
“I…er…have you asked your parents about this?” asked Rainbow, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof.
“Well, uh, not really,” admitted Scootaloo, “but since I want to do therapy with you, they’d just see it as big sister, little sister time, like usual, right?”
“Um, in a way, I guess?”
“Yeah, plus since you’re being taught how to fly, if I do the therapy too, maybe I can go flying with you for real even sooner!”
Dash could only sigh internally. Somehow, Scoot still couldn’t get it through her head that her…condition…wasn’t going to be something that could be rushed to stop being a detriment to her flying abilities. But Rainbow knew that, at the same time, it would crush Scootaloo’s heart and soul for her idol and big sister to tell her that no, she could not attend therapy with aforementioned idol and big sister. Furthermore, Rainbow knew there was a lot of promised sibling playtime that had needed to be postponed thanks to her workplace injury, playtime of the like which Scootaloo’s parents had told Rainbow Dash was good for countering the short episodes of cripplingly low self-esteem their daughter occasionally had about not being able to fly.
The blue pegasus could only gulp nervously. She could not possibly say no to Scootaloo in this matter, both because of her relationship, and because she had to live up to her role as the one who represented the Element of Loyalty. I just hope I don’t have to worry about Applejack’s honesty streak rubbing off on me, worried Dash, because this is going to require me to be anything but honest all day…