//------------------------------//
// 7 - and Ice 
// Story: Soarin's Pet Rock 
// by Beware The Carpenter 
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Stoner watched in anxious anticipation. He’d seen the Wonderbolts practice for their finale and knew that it wasn’t as good as the Rocketeer’s. He was worried that Soarin might mess everything up, taking a role he hadn’t trained for, but most of all, he was worried about Soarin. 

The dude wasn’t thinking straight, but if he wasn’t willing to listen to him, there really wasn’t anything that Stoner could do. The chances of any of the other Wonderbolts listening to him closely enough for him to tell them about the amulet were slim, and the chances of Stoner making it all the way to Blueblood Manor by himself and getting Bluey to help him were even slimmer. With nothing else he could do, he watched as The Wonderbolts flew for the Canterlot Cup.

Music started playing as Fleet Foot, and Suprise brought two effigies of Celestia and Luna above the stadium and began rotating them like a vertical wheel while the rest of The Wonderbolts played underneath. Whenever Celestia was facing downwards they zipped and zagged, and then zigged each other’s zips; but whenever Luna looked down, they hid under clouds.

The music got faster; Luna turned around and stopped, unwilling to move until she had seen The Wonderbolts perform. Celestia crashed into her and the two alicorns fought, with Luna briefly gaining the upper hoof until Celestia called for aid. The Wonderbolts divided into three teams which spun three cyclones into one; a minute later they brought their cyclones together, merging them into one massive cyclone which rose up, catching Luna into its stormy grasp and banishing her into the distant storm cloud above. 

The act paused for a moment, and then the music began again, now more ominous. The Storm cloud that had hovered over the stadium, once a pillar that was straight and tall, began to flatten, losing its altitude rapidly as it spread out to cover the sky. Lightning flashed downwards, with optical illusions making them appear to be striking much closer to the audience than they really were, as an armor-clad Nightmare Moon descended from the boiling sky, casting lightning bolts at the fake Celestia and casting her into a prison-like cloud of her own. 

The music intensified, there was nothing The Wonderbolts could do against such a malevolent foe, but there were six ponies that could. There was a large cloud in the middle of the stadium, and the Wonderbolts flew in a star pattern towards it, slicing it into six equal pieces in a single blow. Each of the six was loaded with capsules of fast-acting dye, that spread every time the clouds were moved, as the Wonderbolts speed-sculpted them into blue, orange, pink, white, yellow and purple ponies. 

In less than a minute, the sculptures would be finished, and then everything would be up to Rainbow Dash who would fly up through the bottom, and break the sound barrier just below Nightmare Moon. On either side of Dash’s course were two clouds, coated with a thin sheet of ice, containing two final, densely packed cloud statues of Celestia and Luna. If Dash broke the sound barrier right between them; the shockwave would dissipate the ice, and then the vortex of air rushing back would draw the two princesses together again, under the shining spotlight from the hole Dash would make in the top layer of clouds; but everything depended on her having the speed and timing.

On one of the early practice rounds, Dash had been able to go fast enough that The Princesses would be almost touching, and but that was before she’d lost some of her feathers practicing a few days ago. She needed all the support she could get, and so Spitfire was going to fly in front of her to act as a windbreaker so Dash could build up speed and conserve energy; then fall away at the last minute so Dash could do the Sonicrainboom. That’s what Soarin was meant to be doing now, except he wasn’t falling away.

Dash’s wings pumped madly, and she signaled for Soarin to fall out, Stoner knew that Soarin must have seen her through the tiny mirrors on his fore-hooves, but Soarin ignored her. Stoner bit his bottom lip. Soarin was still flying in front of Rainbow Dash a good three hundred yards after he was meant to fall back. Then, just when looked like she was about to swerve her course and take another lap before it was too late, Soarin back-flipped, and began flying face to face to Rainbow Dash and preventing her from veering off course.
If Dash broke the sound barrier now she could hurt, or maybe even kill him; he motioned furiously at him to fall away, but Soarin just flew a few inches closer. Dash swerved like she was going to abandon the act but then Soarin reached out and caught her, like a dancer, making it seem so smooth, and natural anyone else would have thought it was planned. He gave her a light pull to rematch her speed to his, spun her and then, at precisely the right moment; they both broke the sound barrier.