Wonderbolt Down

by Rebonack

Wherein There is Too Much Pony

Day Three
Twenty Two Days Remain

Snowing. It's snowing and I'm dancing with the delicately descending crystals in tune with the wind. I can feel the world around me. I can hear the song in the air. I can hear the melody of the clouds. I can feel the symphony of the wide open sky. I can feel the harmony binding everything together. Simple joy. Foal-like joy. And then I see those hideous yellow eyes. The song becomes discordant and where there was music only whiteness and pain remains.

The dream dissolves away.

I'm laying on Surprise's couch, I remember. For a time I simply lay there trying not to think. If I don't move then I can imagine that I'm still normal and this is all a strange dream that has blurred the line between reality and fantasy. The illusion is broken when one of my ears swivels to zero in on the sound of a bird singing outside.

Thanks a lot ear.

I give my tail an irritated flick and hit myself in the face.

Wonderful. This is exactly how I was hoping to start my day.

Finally I ease my eyes open and discover that the world has changed. Or how I see the world at least. Everything looks crisper and better defined than it had before. I focus my attention on a lamp and gyrate my neck a little to move it against its background. With that simple motion suddenly the lamp may as well be highlighted while my brain busily calculates exactly how much force I would need to leap across the room and pounce on the unsuspecting appliance.

“Wow. That's neat,” I mutter. I crane my neck to peer back at myself and find that it is far more flexible than it was before. Being able to turn my neck a full hundred and eighty degrees is kind of surreal.

Alright, enough laying around. Time to get up. I reach out a hand to pull the blanket off myself only to think better. It takes a bit of finagling with the muscles and nerves but eventually I figure out how all the joints in my wings move. I snap one wing straight up and then give it a flick, tossing the blanket away.

Nothing human is left. My whole body is some weird mix of feline and equine in general shape and I'm covered in mottled brown fur. The end of my beak has turned black, though the nose portion is still yellow. There are probably names for the various beak parts but I can't recall them. My mane seems intent on holding its shape regardless of how I sleep on it. From the way my limbs move I can tell I probably could walk upright, but it would be really awkward. Like when I hold Soundwave up and dance around with him while he glares death.

And of course there are the wings.

I know it should seem strange to have these new utterly alien limbs attached to me and moving like they have always been part of me, but I just can't seem to muster the feelings of revulsion I'm sure I should be having. Instead when I look back at my wings I can't help but feel that some error has been corrected and I should have had them to begin with. It's vaguely unsettling. Seven 'primary feathers' adorn each wing, though they're far thicker and too articulate to just be feathers. Though now that I think about it Gilda had bones inside her 'feathers' when she got shocked by Pinkie.

Hmm...

With wing anatomy on the mind I roll off the couch and begin pacing around the room. Walking helps order the thoughts after all. I flex my wings. Fold them. Fluff the feathers on them and give them a shake. Spread them again and begin wiggling each primary in turn. It's almost like having a giant set of big fluffy hands. Though I don't think they bend the right way to actually hold an object with them. Thankfully I've got real hands for that.

On a whim I heft my wings up and then give a strong flap. Much to my surprise I don't feel my hooves touching the floor any longer. Much to my chagrin I feel my skull collide with the ceiling. I crash into the floor and the breath woofs out of my lungs.

I lay there for a few minutes, head pounding from my disastrous maiden flight. “Okay,” I resolve. “Flying is for outside only.”

“Are you okay Geneva?” Surprise yells from elsewhere in the house. “That sounded like a crash!”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” I reply. I give my head a rub and I'm relieved to find no blood on my hands. “I'm just getting acquainted with the interactions between pegasus magic and solid objects. Turns out my head makes an ideal tool for the job.”

“Just making sure! I'm, uuhh, kind of figuring out how to walk,” Surprise replies.

Figuring out how to walk? What? I start following the sound of her voice. “What do you mean? It's like crawling on all fours. Just on your toes instead of your knees. There's nothing to it.”

I find Surprise wobbling around in the hallway like a newborn foal. She's staring down at her hooves in deep concentration runs headlong into me. She gives a little yelp, loses her balance, overcompensates, and then topples sideways into the wall.

“You're thinking about this too hard, Surprise,” I laugh. Without second thought I sit down on my haunches like a huge cat to free up my hands. From the sitting position it's a lot easier to help Surprise back to her hooves. “Stop trying to walk and just walk. Your body knows how to move, but you're trying to take over manually.”

“Do or do not,” Surprise wheezes in her best Yoda voice. “There is no try. I think I know what you mean Geneva. It's just tricky! Tricky tricksee hoofses.”

Off to the guest room to check on Dust! I shove the door open and I'm greeted by the sight of Dust on the floor doing pushups with her wings. Wingups? Something. She's pretty intense and takes a moment to notice us staring at her.

“Oh, hey guys. Welcome to ponydom,” she says casually.

“What are you doing?” I ask incredulously.

“Just refining my awesome. It takes a lot of work to be the best. And we ARE the best now. We're Wonderbolts! And that means we're going to have to train to stay in in peak condition!” Dust says, slipping into her coach mode.

I can already see images of training montages dancing before my eyes.

Dust continues her motivational spiel. “If we're going to wow them at that interview we're going to need to look good. So that means practice practice practice!”

“Maybe after breakfast?” Surprise suggests hopefully.

“Come to think of it, how ARE we going to practice flying? We're kind of conspicuous,” I point out.

Dust replies with a cocky grin. “Looked outside lately?”

My weather sense is telling me that it's really cloudy but that didn't prepare me for what I see when I pull back the blinds.

“Wow. That's some major fog,” I mumble. We get thick fog like this every now and again that rolls in from the sea. Fog so thick that you're lucky if visibility is limited to fifty feet or so. But usually it only shows up late at night. And when I open the window to get a better feel for it I can tell that this fog will be sticking around until mid afternoon.

“Who knows what lurks within the mist! OOOoooooOOOoh!” Surprise moans spookily and waves her front hooves around. “It'll be like that one movie except with adorable aliens instead of scary ones!”

“This is perfect guys,” Dust says. “Once we get the hang of it we fly above the flog and practice up there. There's no one to see us and if we crash we'll be crashing into nice soft clouds instead of going through someone's roof. And we'll even get a chance to try building stuff with clouds if we feel like it.”

“I'm going to make a snowmare! Or a cloudmare I guess?” Surprise giggles. “This is going to be so much fun!”

We break for breakfast and I'm given the duty of serving up horse feed from several large white bags into bowls for my friends. When you're the only one equipped with hands you get stuck with a lot of the chores. I try some of the crunchy horse food and it actually isn't half bad. The stuff looks almost exactly like Allbran and tastes about a million times better. Though I'm willing to bet Allbran would be a lot more palatable than I recall. I snack on a few of the leftover cupcakes and can't help but field a question.

“How did you get that first batch of cupcakes done so fast, Surprise?” I ask.

“I just had some store cupcakes sitting around the house! So I brought those out while the others were cooking,” she replies with a grin between mouthfuls of equine cereal.

Okay. That actually makes sense. Still doesn't explain the closet thing though...

I don't want to ruin my friend's appetites so I resolve to chow down on my meat later on when I'm alone. Have to be sensitive to the feelings of others after all. So it's all cupcakes and horse feed for me this morning. Watching my friends eat is actually pretty amusing. Dust tries to maneuver a spoon between her hooves but that ends up as a complete disaster. Eventually she follows Surprise's example and just shoves her face in the bowl to chow down.

With breakfast done and bowls are rinsed of alfalfa detritus the house is starting to smell very much like a pet store. Out into Surprise's back yard we go and find ourselves utterly surrounded by mist. My weird air pressure sense still provides me with a line of sight 'image' of things the mist was obscuring. It even tells me that if I fly five hundred and thirty eight feet straight up I'll encounter clear skies.

My eyes turned skyward I speak. “One really strong wing flap was enough to hurl me into the ceiling,” I recount. And then toss a glare Dust's way when she snickers. “So maybe start with something...”

I trail off when I spot Surprise hovering five feet off the ground. And hanging upside down. Her wings are flapping at a pretty lazy rate. Ooookay. That isn't possible at all. But remember, magic!

Dust begins flapping her own wings and starts lifting off the grass and I decide to follow suit. As I rise I get the weird impression that I'm weightless. Or floating in water. The mist around me has an odd sort of give to it akin to snow. Like I could walk on it, but if I stomp it just right I'll plow right through it. The feeling is coming mostly from my wings, I think? Another point for the 'pegasus wings are sensory organs' hypothesis. As distracted as I am pondering the mysteries of pony magic I don't notice right away that we're about twenty feet above the ground and in the process of clearing Surprise's roof.

Heh.

We're flying.

“Alright Wonderbolts!” Dust yells. “We're heading up. Don't stop until you clear the fog!”

And in a rush of wing beats Dust goes hurtling out of sight with a crackling blue and yellow contrail behind her. Given the way my wings are tingling I'm pretty sure the light display is pure magic. I glance over at Surprise and she responds with a nod. We both begin pumping our wings for all we're worth and take off like adorable fuzzy rockets.

I know I took off pretty fast there. And it strikes me that I didn't feel the tell tale sinking feeling of a sudden acceleration. I make a little mental check mark next to the 'flight magic absorbs and creates accelerative force' box. Yay for science! I'll need to make a point of testing out the limits of my ability to control a completely hitherto unknown physical force.

Eeee!

This is so exciting!

I'm left boggling at how little time it takes for us to break above the layer of fog. An endless sea of white stretches in all directions around me. The only color is the brilliant blue morning sky above and my magical pastel colored horse friends.

“This is so cool!” I squeal in girly delight. I'm about ten feet above the fog when I decide to snap my wings shut and drop like a stone. When I hit the mist I grab onto it and feel it compressing to soften my impact and slow me down. Oddly enough the fog isn't filling in the hole I just punched into it, leaving a gap about ten feet wide open to the sky above. And below me? I wrap my legs around my prize and start beating my wings again. Once I'm above the fog layer again I fold me wings, give them a fluff, and sit down on my new cloud.

It's an incredibly cartoony looking thing, just like the clouds from the show. A five foot wide cottony mass of water droplets supporting my weight as surely as a cloud would support Mario. It has a refreshingly cool feel to it quite unlike anything I've ever encountered. And of course it's completely, utterly, physically impossible. At least based on our currently flawed understanding of physics. I'll bet I could write a PhD thesis on cloud magic and become famous if anyone were willing to give out PhDs to half pony cat-birds.

Surprise is busy making cloud angels down in the fog and Dust is zipping around testing her flight. Just flapping the wings with her legs hanging below her results ascent, descent, or a hover depending on how fast she flaps them. When she holds her hooves out in front of her Super Man style she takes off full speed ahead. Angling her body to either side results in turns and a particularly sharp turn results in a hundred mile an hour face-plant into the fog. Large puffs of cloud go billowing out of the crater she blasts into the otherwise pristine surface.

I feel a tinge of worry, but my pressure sense is telling me that Dust is still moving around down there and starting to ascend again. She's all grins when she pops out of the clouds.

“Hahaha! Did you see that?” she crows. “That was amazing!”

“It was a really great crash, Dusty!” Surprise comments from atop one of the clouds that Dust's impact had dislodged. Surprise has somehow managed to fashion herself a Santa beard out of cloud stuff.

“Forget the crash. Did you see how fast I was going?” Dust laughs. I can nearly feel the adrenalin pounding in her ears from where I'm sitting. “I couldn't sleep last night and so I had Wonderbolt Academy playing on loop. I was watching how all the pegasi flew and stuff. And you know what?” her grin grows all the wider as she works toward her earth shaking revelation. “Everything. Works. Just. Like. The show! Everything!”

I contemplate that while Dust continues to pontificate about how amazing she is. That narrows down the field of study a fair bit, doesn't it? Knowing the basics of flight means less experimentation and more practice. Flying already feels pretty natural to me. As if my lack of wings had kept me on the ground quite in spite of how it was meant to be. As if the skies were my destiny.

“That's what my cutie mark is telling me~!” Surprise sings over my shoulder.

One panicked squawk later I'm hovering about fifty feet away from my cloud and giving Surprise the evil eye. I glance at where she had been moments before, then back to her. She waves a hoof at me cheerfully.

“Enough goofing around!” Dust declares. “It's time to get serious. We're going to start practicing for real now. I'll explain the basics. And listen close because I'm only doing it once, got it?”

Dust provides us with a crash course on all the various wing, leg, and body positions that direct pegasus flight. It's actually all pretty intuitive. “And if you lose control just get a soft grip on the fog and it'll break your fall. Got it? Good! Now get moving!”

Yep. Time to get serious. Flight magic turns out to be a pretty odd thing that's half precise movements and half intent. The magic seems to know what I want to do, but it needs the cues from various movements of my limbs to direct it. Flapping my wings faster has no business providing me with any additional thrust. They're entirely the wrong shape to do anything of the sort. Holding my hands out in front of shouldn't cause me to take off like a missile, but it does. Turning my head to peer at the double helix of black and white spiraling around a red core behind me ends up being an awful idea and I eat cloud.

The funny thing is that it doesn't hurt at all. It's like flopping into the most yielding bed ever. So I just laugh, beat my wings, and pretty soon I'm at it again. Though soon enough a familiar sensation halts my frolicking in the clouds. “I. Uuuh. Hey Dust? I've got to go to the bathroom. What should I do?”

Lightning Dust banks past me with jaw dropping speed only to pull upright, pull her legs in, and start beating her wings furiously. Withing the span of a fifty feet she completely kills her forward momentum and drops into a hover.

“Did you just ask what I think you asked?” she asks with a wry grin.

I fluff my wings uncomfortably. “Probably?”

“Just let 'er fly,” Dust suggests. “That's what I did.”

My friend is met with a horrified look. “What's if there's someone under us?”

Dust is already zooming off again and yells over her shoulder, “That's their problem!”

Is this really a good idea? My gurgling insides inform me that it's going to be happening good idea or not. I plant my nethers against the fog, relax, and do what comes naturally. I really hope I didn't just drop terminal velocity hippogriff crap on my car.

That task done I turn my attention back to the training. I have no idea how many hours we burn romping about in the clouds. It's really easy to lose track of time. There's a certain freedom that comes with flying under your own power that you just can't find anywhere else. We quickly begin testing our limits. How fast can we fly? How fast can we stop? How sharply can we turn? If we get thirsty we just need to stomp the rain out of a cloud. With the whistling of flight and the glowing magical contrails we put on quite the show. I'm glad there's no one else up here. We would be absolutely unmistakable if there were.

~~~~~

“Murray Tower? This is Cessna one one niner echo foxtrot. I've spotted a, uh... An unidentified flying object at six hundred feet right above Korbel,” the pilot reported. He's unsure whether or not his eyes should be believed.

“What? Like little green men echo foxtrot?” squawked air traffic control's jovial reply.

“No, more like a little green horse.”

~~~~~

I didn't notice the propeller driven single prop aircraft until I settled down on a cloud again. The sound of the wind in my ears had drowned out the drone of its engine. As soon as I spot it my ears fold back and a feeling of dread begins squirming in my gut.

“Eyes in the sky!” I roar, surprising myself with the reverberating boom of my voice. “Wonderbolts take cover!”

We all dive into the fog and the world turns white. I can't see a thing in this pea soup so I close my eyes and focus on my air pressure sense. I'm thankful for the ability to feel my relative altitude since having the ground sneak up on me would be an awful way to end my morning. And life. Dust is somewhere behind me and about fifty fight above while Surprise is lurking around much closer. I'm not altogether sure how I can tell the two of them apart, though I think I can live with another item on my long 'how the hell am I doing this?' list.

“Can everypony hear me still?” I call off into the haze.

“Loud and clear!” Dust bellows back.

“Roger Wilcox!” Surprise says from a dozen or so feet below me and to the left. I'm pretty sure 'Roger Wilcox' isn't the proper phrase but correcting my crazy friend is pretty low on my priority list at the moment.

Geeze I've amassed a lot of lists over the past few days. Maybe I need a list list?

“Keep your wings tucked and a light grip on the fog,” Dust suggests. “You'll fall really slow and we can meet up on the ground.”

I let go of the mist drop like a rock in water. In a panic I grab at it with my magic again, grinding myself to a halt and pressing out a small cloud under me. I buck the cheerful little white monument to my failure with a hoof and it obligingly evaporates. Huh. That's right. Smashing a cloud with a hoof vaporizes it in the show. Weird that it doesn't give off any heat. Turning that much liquid water into gas takes a whole lot of energy. Which helps to paint a pretty clear picture of just how much power my friends and I are casually throwing around.

Geeze magic is crazy.

It's pretty stop and go, but eventually I find a comfortable medium between free fall and stationary to pace my descent. Though I'm surprised to find a forest of tree-shapes looming up from below us rather than houses and streets. It isn't too long after that I settle on a fir tree, its crown bending under my weight. Weird. This isn't what I was expecting at all. Dust is the one to voice what we're all thinking.

“But... we stayed more or less in one spot, didn't we?” she says as she lands on another hulking tree. “How did we get so far away from Surprise's place?”

Surprise is busy tapping one hoof to her face, pondering as she hovers effortlessly. “The wind! The wind has been blowing from the west since this morning! It must have blown the fog inland!”

Dust and I both give an exasperated groan. Of course the wind would keep the fog rolling. That's what fog does. At least this gives us a heading to fly in.

“Next time we try something like this,” I suggest. “We should bring my phone with us. I can use the GPS to figure out exactly where we are.”

“But you don't have any pockets, silly!” Surprise helpfully points out.

“Eh. We'll just have to make some saddlebags for her. It's no big deal,” Dust says dismissively. “We should probably get moving, though. We still need to check on Silver. And you still have that party to throw at Geneva's apartment.”

“Ugh, don't remind me. We're aren't seriously doing that, are we?” I ask. “You know that it'll end in disaster somehow.”

“Pfft. You know these people Geneva. So you tell me what will happen. They walk in, get a load of my awesome, and then what's next?” Dust asks.

I give a little snort and mull it over. My perching tree is getting a little uncomfortable at this point so I adjust my footing. How would my other friends react? “Surprised, I guess. So long as they listen to me I could explain what's going on. Of the eight people in the group I know four of them are bronies-”

Dust is instantly in my face with a grin stretching across her own. “Really? Who's their favorite pony?” then all smooth-like she runs a hoof through her mane. “As if there's any contest.”

I playfully shove the narcissistic pegasus out of my personal space. “Sorry Dust, I haven't got a clue. I'm not a Pony fan, remember? I guess we might be able to pull it off. But it'll be a risk like anything else. Though we could use some footage of ponies and humans interacting peacefully for the video. That would probably be more effective than a couple talking pony heads.”

“Great! It's settled then. We do the party thing and let your friends swoon over Lightning Dust,” Dust laughs. “But first we need to get back into town and check in on Silver.”

We've got a plan, we've got a heading, and we've got the wings to carry us. We turn west and take off toward the coast. As we're flying the fog is beginning to break up. The wind has changed direction and now we're getting some warm air coming in from the south. Great. Now our cover is going to dissolve. We're already over the city again and I'm spotting bits and pieces of it through the patchy fog. This outing may well become disastrous.

Thankfully Surprise comes up with an idea.

“Clouds! We need clouds!” she giggles, getting a look of confusion from Dust and I.

“Well duh, of course we need clouds. We need cover so no one spots us from the ground,” Dust replies.

“No, silly! We make some clouds and hug onto the top of them! Then we fly them around! We'll be camouflaged!” Surprise clarifies.

I burst out laughing at the absurdity of our situation. We've been turned into cartoon characters and now we need to build some cartoon clouds so we don't get discovered by any random onlookers. “Surprise, that's brilliant. Let's get to work.”

We had already gotten plenty of experience the past few hours playing with clouds and so the task goes quickly. Just compress some cloud with your body and wings and done! One nice big cottony cloud for us all to settle on top of. It takes a little effort for us to match each others pace and Dust complains loudly about Surprise being too slow, but I think she'll live.

This has to look odd from the ground. A cloud puttering along against the wind and changing direction every now and again. Of course we're high enough up that it shouldn't look like we're moving that quickly. So unless someone decides to stand around and watch our cloud bumble about for fifteen minutes we should be good.

I peer over the edge every once in a while to check our position. Navigating from on high is a little tricky, but thankfully I can recognize a lot of the major landmarks. This is actually a bit quicker than driving by car since we can just go as the crow flies. Or as the pegasus flies, I guess. The lack of speed limit doesn't hurt either.

Before long our cloudmobile is hanging above Silver's little rental house. It's the middle of the day and most of the neighborhood's residence are at work. But there are still enough humans wandering around that simply dropping out of the sky and bucking his front door open isn't going to work. Getting spotted out here isn't on the agenda.

“Hmmm...” Surprise is looking really thoughtful again. That's either a really good sign or a really bad sign. “I can get us in! Just follow my lead exactly, okay?”

“Worst case scenario one person spots us,” I reason. “Even if they get our picture that won't mean much. Using photo-manipulation to add a pony to a picture isn't exactly rocket science.”

Dust nods. “You're the lead pony on this mission, Surprise. Don't let us down!”

“Okee dokee! See that mail box down there?” Surprise points a hoof at a rather typical looking mail box complete with flappy red arm thingy. “On my word fly directly above at an altitude of twenty feet. Wait thirty seconds and then fly behind those bushes. Wait there six seconds and then we head for Silver's back door! Okay?”

We both nod. Twenty feet, wait thirty, bushes, wait six. Seems simple enough.

“Go!”

Down we dive and start our hover just as a man comes strolling out of his house humming a cheerful tune and carrying a stack of garbage. He opens up a can and tosses the bag inside. The fellow starts to turn again, but something desirable catches his eye.

“Oh hey, a dollar,” he comments brightly as he stoops down to pick up the bill and our thirty seconds expires. We dart into the bushes while his attention is on the money. “Hello?” he calls out only to find empty streets all around. With a shrug he walks back into his house.

We're soon standing at Silver's back door. Dust can't help but ask, “How do you do that?”

Surprise giggles. “How do you know what the weather is doing? I just do! Isn't that good enough?”

Good enough for me.

I try the back door (go hands!) and find that it's unlocked. As soon as I ease it open a crack our noses are assaulted by the stink of booze and sick. Silver... probably isn't taking this very well. We exchange worried looks and head inside, picking our way through the mess. It looks like a tiny horse-shaped tornado had torn its way through the apartment smashing everything within bucking range.

Nope. Definitely not taking it well.

“We never should have left him alone,” I mutter as we spread out to search the house. He hated ponies. And even when this was just ears and tails Silver was in a sort of drunken denial over the whole thing. Had he just completely snapped when he woke up this morning? I hope he didn't hurt himself...

“Surprise! Geneva! Front room now!” Dust bellows. My hands and hooves pound the floor as I take off in a run and end up in an ungainly heap of splayed limbs. Wonderful. My brain has no trouble adapting to 'trot' but when I try 'gallop' all I get are error messages. I heft myself upright again and pace myself this time, dreading all the while what will be waiting for me.

Dust and Surprise are already there staring at the front door. The jam has been splintered and hoof marks mar the door itself. Silver isn't anywhere in the house. And the front door was nearly bucked off its hinges.

“He's gone,” Surprise murmurs. I swear her mane loses a bit of its volume.

“Damn it,” Dust hisses. “He could be anywhere by now. How are we going to find him?”

“We won't,” I say. “Randomly searching the city isn't going to do us any good. Like Dust said he could be anywhere right now.”

Hopefully not locked up by animal control.

“We need him to find us. He knows where we'll be. He knows where my apartment is and he knows that we stocked up on supplies over at Surprise's place. Silver would have to be crazy-lucky to reach either without getting himself caught. But... short of seeing a story about a talking pegasus on the news I think this is our best chance to find him again.”

I don't like it very much.

And my friends don't like it very much either.

But sadly we're short on pegasus tracking equipment so we're just going to have to hope for the best.

“We'll just make is such a super amazing spectacular party that Silver will have to show up!” Surprise resolves. “Come on! We've got a swinging get together to get together! If we head out the bathroom window right now we'll be able to make it to our cloud without being spotted!”

And awaaaaay!

Thank goodness for Surprise's improbable sneaking powers otherwise we probably would have been caught thrice over by now. We make a quick pit stop at Surprise's house to pick up my wallet and phone along with a few vital items (why a rubber chicken is vital I won't pretend to understand) before parking our cloudmobile over my apartment complex.

Seven stories of cheap housing looms below us. We have five hours before guests should begin arriving. That should be plenty of time for Surprise to work her magic on my apartment. And I have the sneaking suspicion that the magic she's going to be working will be quite literal.

Though we're still left with one rather daunting problem.

“So... how are we going to get inside?” Dust asks. “We would have to come in through the lobby and then hike all the way up to the seventh floor without getting caught, right?”

I nod. “Though on the upside maybe we could land on the roof and try coming in that way? My keycard opens the roof access so that means less sneaking in our future. We aren't as likely to run into people wandering around on the seventh floor.”

“Sounds good to me. Ready to do the ninja thing Surprise?” Dust asks with a grin.

Surprise is already tying some sort of weird scarf over her forehead.

With her hooves.

Somehow.

“My spirit yearns within me to be acknowledged,” Surprise says. I swear her mouth is out of synch with her words. “I was born with readiness.”

Then she leaps off our cloud and free-falls toward the roof below. At the last moment she snaps her wings open in a whir of motion, slows to a snail's pace, and alights gently between a pair of air conditioning units. From far below Surprise beckons us to follow.

Dust and I share a glance.

“May as well,” my friend says.

We both dive off the cloud and the ground begins rushing up to meet us. You would think that a skydiving pegasus and hippogriff would be pretty easy to spot, but at this point I trust Surprise's stealth sense after seeing it in action. Or not seeing it in action and getting startled by the results. As we near the roof some powerful wing beats while aiming our noses skyward kills our fall. It's hilariously similar to a cartoon character thrusting their feet at the ground to put on the brakes. That might even be exactly what's happening.

“Alright Surprise. What's... next...” I ask, only to trail off when I notice that she's wearing a pigeon in her mane. The bird peers back at me with its vacant orange eyes.

Surprise motions for us to be quiet and creeps off across the roof. I pull out my keycard and swipe the door open for us. Once inside Surprise motions for us to hang back while she starts off toward my apartment entrance.

Only to be spotted by Mrs. McCullough.

Her reaction is... odd though. Instead of flipping out about the pegasus walking around in the hall she just gives a disgusted snort. “Great. Those filthy pigeons are getting in here again. I'm going to have to talk to the superintendent about this.”

And with a huff she storms off into the elevator.

We both trot out into the hallway behind Surprise. I had thought, honestly thought, that I had seen the weirdest things she had to offer. And every time I think that Surprise sees fit to shatter my ill-conceived notions of the limits of possibility.

“How?” I manage to squawk out.

Surprise smiles. “She was not strong enough to defeat Improbable Pigeon Shroud Technique.”

Comments

[An A10 Warthog]

30,000 words from the start? I'll check it out.

[Dementia20]

i´ll give it a try

[RubyVesper]

Saw smaller description, immediately knew it was a 5S/4 sidestory.

[TwistedSpectrum]

Posting five, well developed chapters on the first day of release?

This man is no amateur...

[Dementia20]

Ahem... Testing, Testing... 1 2 3 OK.

MOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!11!!!11!

P.S. Like and Fave. Good job Sir/Madame

[Pop chatters]

2944806 +1

Hurr durr.

[Rebonack]

2944591

Hehe. Considering that we've seen no hippogriffs on the show yet? According to the mythology surrounding hippogriffs they inherit all the best traits of their griffin father and mare mother. I think having a magical special talent falls well within the boundaries of such inheritance.

As for Lance/Geneva's pre-metamorphosis appearance? That was intentional. I described aspects that were immediately relevant to the story (brown hair, nice goatee, likes hats) as they came up. I think a character should be described in exactly the detail that they need to be for the purpose of the story. Unnecessary details are just that, unnecessary.

That and self-descriptions are kind of weird in a first person perspective present tense story. Unless the narrator is a narcissist like a certain blue pegasus who will remain unnamed.

2945260

Human expression of spirituality is tremendously varied. It can be highly formal and ritualized all the way down to a very casual kind of occasion. I picked the casual end of the spectrum since I doubted that Lance/Geneva would be met with a very positive experience at a 'high church' establishment.

Now then!

Time to go help Surprise organize a party.

[Dementia20]

2945558 oh, sorry if i was mean

[Rebonack]

2946019

Aww, you weren't mean. Everyone has their own styles and head-canons after all. I just figured it would be a decent idea to share my thought process.

I'm glad you're enjoying the story! Knowing that I managed to make someone smile tells me that I'm doing something right.

[Dementia20]

2946101
I hope your fic get to the "Featured" Box. Its REALLY great!

[werewolf435]

Definitely keeping an eye on this. Keep up the good work, though I did notice few mistakes.

so that means a less sneaking.

For example.

But sadly we've short on pegasus tracking

And that.

Just some of the ones that really caught my attention.

[Rebonack]

2947192

Hehe, thanks. Errors have been corrected.

I'm glad everyone is enjoying the story thus far. It's being written mostly because the concept held me down at knife point and demanded that I start typing. Ever been held hostage by your ideas before? It's scary

That fact that other people can enjoy reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it brings a smile to my face

[werewolf435]

2947304 glad to help. And keep up the good work... any estimates on when we might see the next chapter?

[Rebonack]

2947436

Mmmmm...

I think you can expect one pretty soon.

[An A10 Warthog]

The ATC-pilot interaction bothered me because I am a private pilot. The pilot wouldn't have said 'tower' he'd have said '(insert airport name) tower'. And he would have ended with a callsign and an approximate location of the sighting.

If you want to know what ATC sounds like, visit Liveatc.net and they have live feeds from many airports.

[EverfreeSparkle]

2945558 The narcissist statement about Rainbow Dash (come on, we all knew it was her) in this comment is just a massive win!

[Dogman15]

"Thanks a lot ear." You need a comma after "lot".
"tell tale sinking" Isn't "telltale" one word?
You said "Geeze", but I think the word is "jeez".

[swyrl]

Improbable Pigeon Shroud Technique.

That sounds like something from hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

[Rosie Quill]

5084379
I agree