//------------------------------// // When This Baby Hits Eighty-Eight, We're Gonna See Some Serious... // Story: The Wrong Stuff // by DashEight //------------------------------// "Flight Test One-Six, cleared for takeoff runway two-seven, depart Plateau airspace heading one-eight-zero." "Thank you, mysterious voice!" Soarin chirped happily as he and Rainbow trotted out to the end of the landing strip. "For crying out loud Soarin, I'm a real pony, not your--you know what, never mind. Just go already." The two Wonderbolts took wing, skimming along the runway at breakneck speeds before climbing away from HQ. Soarin let Rainbow pull ahead, tucking himself neatly into the wingpony slot to her side. He had seniority, but Dash was the undisputed expert when it came to the sound barrier. They rose above the clouds, weaving through the puffy cumuli. Rainbow rolled and waved as they passed a group of cadets running cloudbusting drills, suppressing a snicker as they waved back only to incite the ire of their drill sergeant. She basked in the nostalgia of it, any one of those ponies could've been her the last year, running the same exercises during her time at the Academy. Well, slower and less awesome versions of her, but the point still stands. They continued their climb away from the Plateau until they were only visible as specks far above the cloud layer. Soarin flew around Rainbow to face the rookie as she slowed to a hover. "Okay, this looks good!" she shouted, trying to catch her breath in the thin, frigid air. "We'll dive southeast past Ponyville towards Ghastly Gorge, that should give us enough open space for the Rainboom. I'll accelerate slow so you can stay with me 'till the last second, just stay clear of my wake!" Soarin crossed his forehooves confidently and raised an eyebrow. "I think I can handle it, rook. I'm on your wing the whole way, but once we're done I've gotta pull rank." "Whuh? For what?" "Rainboom or not, it's still my job to make sure you know our routine." He paused. "Also, celebration pit stop. There's a farmer in Ponyville that makes the most ridonculous apple pie I've ever eaten." Soarin's eyes momentarily glazed over at the memory. He snapped out of it as a thought popped into his head. "You wouldn't happen to know her, would you?" "I... might be able to hook you up there. Once this works. C'mon, this altitude's making me dizzy!" Rainbow tucked her wings against her flanks, letting gravity collect on debts owed. Soarin plummeted after her, his thundercloud contrail tearing after her prismatic streak. The two felt the wind push back against their hooves as they dove. Soarin squinted as his goggles dug into his head. As they dropped, he found it more and more difficult to keep pace with Rainbow. Even with their downhill run, Soarin had to pour every bit of energy he had into his wings to keep pace with the younger pegasus at full sprint. He sucked in rapidly-thickening air as fast as he could, struggling against the increasing heat and strain on his wingbones. "Getting close!" Rainbow shouted back. "Watch the noseover!" The 'noseover' was where most young racers saw their dreams of glory shattered. The bow wave of compressed air a pegasus had to 'push through' did odd things to one's balance, sending all but the most experienced into a high-speed crash dive. (Junior Speedsters sponsors several PSAs about the danger of teens experimenting with Rainbooms, as well as an aerial health education class. The land under Cloudsdale, to this day uninhabited and scarred with impact craters, is a testament to how well these work.) However, Soarin was no schoolcolt with delusions of grandeur. He shifted his weight and tucked back his wings to avoid the dreaded death drop, but found he could go no faster. He had hit his wall, metaphorically speaking. Possibly literally as well, if anything went wrong at this point. The ground was getting very close. He forced himself to keep the pace up, pushing against the invisible barrier as best he could as Rainbow pulled ahead. "Aaaany second now!!" Soarin braced himself. BOOM! Prismatic light washed over Soarin. For a moment, he felt electrified. Magic flooded through his body, as if he had trotted up to the Tree of Harmony itself and licked the trunk. He felt alive. He felt fast. BOOM! He felt violently ill. He felt like he was going to die. The world whipped around Soarin, a blur of lights and colors. He felt the blood rush to his head and forehooves as he whirled around and around, spinning like a top as he plummeted straight down. He tried to blink away the blurry images, forcing his eyes to refocus on the horizon line. Ah, shitshitshitshitshit, he thought, keeping in nature with his demeanor as a consummate professional. Flat spin. Okay, just relax. You've done these plenty of times. Remember your training... "Listen up, boots!" Wind Rider spoke sternly. He rarely shouted or cursed like so many other drill instructors at the Academy. He didn't need to. He had this collected, seen-it-all demeanor about him, as if he had witnessed the legions of Tartarus rise up from beneath the earth and was duly unimpressed. It had quickly earned him the cadets' respect. (That, and his helpful hinting that the 'random' drug screening would take place in two weeks' time, had earned him Cadet Soarin's respect in paticular.) He almost never raised his voice or spoke out of anger because he never needed to. When Wind Rider did find the need to raise his voice, ponies listened. Because the topic must be one of utmost importance. "Today, we will be learning spin recognition and recovery. Nopony ever wants to get into a spin, but as Wonderbolts you will be flying the feathered edge of your capabilities. 'Pushing the envelope' is not just a figure of speech here, ponies. With the maneuvers we teach and practice everyday, it will happen, somewhere and sometime you least expect it. Enter our friend the Dizzitron," he motioned to the brightly-painted carnival ride behind him. "This machine allows us to train you to recognize and recover from spins once they've developed. Now," he paused, walking over to a small whiteboard next to the Dizzitron. "Spin recovery boils down to a few simple steps. First and foremost: Never eat less than an hour before conducting spin training." "BLLLEAAAGHHH!!!!" Soarin's breakfast evacuated his stomach with all the force of a centrifuge. The vomit came in a high-pressure stream, a fire hose of half-digested scrambled eggs, haybacon, potatoes, and even that slice of 'special' pie he had eaten the previous night before jamming out to his Grateful Undead records. The force from the spin left a spiral mosaic of puke slurry in his wake, like a sand-art piece made of bodily fluids and shame. Under different circumstances it could have been quite beautiful, if watched from a distance where neither the splatter nor the smell could reach the viewer. Finally, after several thousand feet of his best aerial impression of a lawn-sprinkler, Soarin's stomach settled. Step one, check... "The recovery itself is easily remembered with this acronym," Wind Rider took a marker in his wing, scribbling the letters P-A-R-E vertically on the whiteboard. Power. Ailerons. Rudder. Elevator. "Simple, but when the ground and sky are tumbling end over end and you're too dizzy to spell your own name, simple is good. First is Power. Idle power, no flapping, no matter what your instincts tell you. A spin is essentially an uncoordinated aerodynamic stall, which means your wings will not be making any lift. You cannot power out of a spin, no matter how hard you flap. So force yourself to stop and spread your wings into the glide position." Soarin suddenly noticed how hard he was working his wings in order to regain some control, any control. He willed himself to hold them straight out, like a colt practicing for his first day of flight school. "Next is Ailerons; you'll want to try and bank in the opposite direction to stop the spin, but remember, your wings are stalled. They aren't going to do you any good until you can nose down and get the air flowing properly over them again. No banking. Luckily, we still have our tails, which brings us to number three: Rudder. Use your tail and hindlegs to yaw in the other direction to arrest the spin. It may take a couple turns, but as long as you hold full opposite yaw, it will stop." Soarin shifted his tail and hindlegs to the left and held them there. Slowly but surely, the whirling blur in front of him slowed down, the world straightening out around him. "Last is Elevator; you've arrested the spinning but you are still in a stalled condition. Nose down to get the wind flowing back through your wings properly and break the stall." Soarin leaned foward, feeling a tingle in his primary feathers as the wind stopped whipping through them bottom-to-top and returned to a more natural flow. He sighed in relief, his heart slowing to a more natural pace. Now all he had to worry about was finding Rainbow and the rapidly approaching ground wait what? "Try to remember that even after you recover, you'll still be in a dive. It seems like stating the obvious, but with the adrenaline rush you'd be surprised how many ponies save themselves from a crash spin only to forget to keep flying afterwards. We get more CFIT accidents that way." WHUMP * * * * * Everything was pain. Pain and darkness. Everything was pain and darkness and... moistness?? Not to mention a horrific overpowering smell. Okay, so everything was quite a few things. You could say everything was everything, even. (Though you'd be beaten to a pulp by Fleetfoot if you did, and you'd rightly deserve it.) Soarin groaned. He struggled to move, feeling soft dampness press against every limb. Straining his neck, he forced his head up, his vision clearing as foul-smelling damp brown detritus fell off it. He squinted, eyes adjusting to the early dawn sunrise. A quick glance around told him that he was in a wagon filled with the substance, which had the appearance of damp dirt but smelled infinitely worse. It must have cushioned his fall from the heavens, remember that one for the bar later, and was likely owned by the gargantuan red stallion staring at him with a bemused, slightly annoyed expression. Soarin put on his best celebrity smile. "Hi giant pony!" The fellow regarded him for a few terse moments. "...Howdy." Not a talker, this one. "Am, uh, am I alive? You're not like St. Apple at the gates of Elysium or anything?" "Eeeyup. Yer a few miles south of Ponyville. Might be a lil' roughed up, but yer alive." "I'll be fine. I've had worse." Soarin sneezed, the stench was getting to him. "This... isn't dirt, is it?" "...Nope." "I was afraid of that..." Soarin clambered out of the cart, making a face at the disgusting lifesaving material. He squinted at the sun, still sitting on the horizon. The sky was still grey too, as if the sun hadn't had time to warm it up yet. Soarin looked around in confusion. He and the wagon-pulling earthpony were on a wooded dirt path identical to thousands of others all over Equestria. He could spot Ponyville further down the path, at the bottom of a slight hill. Mist shrouded the town, the sun not yet high enough to burn it off. Soarin scratched his mane, dislodging something slimy he tried not to think about. It was almost noon when he and Dash took off, fog shouldn't last that long. He turned to his new friend. "This is going to sound a little wierd, but did Princess Celestia, like... call a mulligan on raising the sun today? Maybe reset it or something?" The other pony gave him a deadpan stare. "...Nope." "Was I unconscious for an entire day then?" "Nope. A minute at th' most." "...Huh." Soarin was at a loss for words, which didn't happen often. Best to find Rainbow and get back to base, he thought. I can figure out what happened later. He shook himself off and spread his wings. As he looked back at his crimson savior, about to wish the pony farewell, something clicked in his head. Ponyville... country-boy accent... apple Cutie Mark... "Do you... happen to have a sister who sells apple products? Orange, 'bout yay high, always wears a hat?" "Eeyup, Applejack," the stallion replied, suddenly taking a much more guarded stance. "Ah know you," he replied tersely. "Yer the famous racer that keeps sendin' her love letters." "Oh, no! It's nothing like that, I apologize for any misunderstanding!" Soarin waved his hooves apologetically, putting on his 'public relations' face. "I have no romantic intentions for your sister, good sir! I just really wanted to get all up in her pie!" "..." "I'll... I should probably leave now, shouldn't I?" "Ah think that'd be best fer everypony."