The New Beginning

by Dress72

10 Memory's Lessons

I was at Maple Park, and the time was currently 10:50 Am. Most of the town was gathered to learn what the flyers were about. At exactly 11:00 Am, Celestia arrived. “The guest of honor has arrived everypony. Residents of Ponyville, I present you with a pony who will be taking my classes Princess Celestia!” All the ponies bowed.

Twilight spoke up. “Princess Celestia, I had no idea that you were coming today. If I had known,”

I interrupted her, “You would have prepared the town instead of coming to learn what I have to offer.”

“Actually Mr. White Wind, I have come to arrest you for stealing from the national treasury.”

“I knew it,” I murmured under my breath. “Is Your Royal Miss Princess Lady Mare Pony, still upset from the nick name I gave her? Because I could have sworn you bought a parachute, and full lessons on how to use it, AND instructor guidance on how to do tricks, when you were trying to interrogating me for name calling. The Parachute, you bought for 200 bits. The full-intensive, 15 week tutoring on how to use the parachute, sold for 50 bits. And then the trick training, I gave to you for 50 bits. That set I could have sold for 450 bits, but sold to you for 300 bits. I can give you a full refund, but I will need the parachute in an unharmed state. If it isn’t I will have to charge you repair costs, or replacement costs. Now, if you will please sit down Celestia, we are about to begin.”

To my surprise, and everypony else’s, she sat down, slightly defeated by the sudden rejection to follow orders and backlash of exposing the plot. “Alright then,” I started the lesson, “First thing, we will go over, the theory, and the basics of how this works. The theory is, if you are able to catch enough wind over a large surface area, the tension and force that it causes, can lift a pony off the ground. Now the only trick to this, is how to control that surface area, tension, and force created…” I continued to lecture the ponies there and let a few of them try it out for themselves, making sure they stayed on the ground of course. “Celestia, you have your pack with you?” She nodded. “Pass it here.” I received the pack and opened it, finding it all tangled and crumpled.

“Now you see Ladies and Gentlecolts, this is what happens when the packs are not treated correctly after use. They need to be packed correctly, otherwise the string throughout the parachute gets tangled, making it useless or very dangerous to fly with.” I tossed the pack down, “Now you lucky few who got to test lift off, you felt the parachute want to lift you off the ground right?” They nodded and I continued. “Now I couldn’t technically let you take off, as none of you are currently enrolled within my class, but I can have Princess Celestia please come up,” she obliged willingly, and almost seamed excited. “Mind if I tie your wings for the sake of proper flight?” I asked, and she took the cloth and tied her wings herself using magic. “Thank you, now will you put on this pack?” I took off the pack with the doll and gave it to Celestia. “I would like to thank you all for coming to this presentation, which unfortunately is over. I have prepared a set of sheets with proper sign-up labels for if you wish to partake in the wonders of Paragliding. The sign-up sheet is for making an appointment with me to discuss potential classes. Don’t worry too much about remembering the dates for the appointment, as I will send you notices when it is coming up. You are all welcome to stay and watch Celestia’s lesson if you want.”

I turned to the ever so patient Celestia, who had been waiting somewhere halfway through my speech. “I still hate talking, but necessity, is necessary.” Celesta rolled her eyes, or eye. “So, let’s try deploying from a run.” I put on the pack that was already deployed. “Although we have to run into the wind, otherwise we won’t get the lift that we want. One more thing before we start this method. The pack is designed for little control when running, otherwise the chute wouldn’t work properly. Now when adjusted properly, the chute dismisses manual control and gets set into lock. But to set that, we have to lift the forelegs to the chest. And to regain control, we do the same thing. Currently, the parachute should be in manual control, so you will need to switch it into lock.” She did so. “Next we face into the wind. When we start the run, when the controls are locked, they are also set to deploy the chute by four, rapid steps. From there, keep running, the chute will catch wind, and when your forelegs are lifted from the ground, redeploy controls, and we should have lift off.”

“Are you sure you hate talking?” Celestia asked doubtfully.

“Absolutely Your Royal Miss Princess Lady Mare Pony,” came the cheery response. “Now if you will, I believe we have some flying to get to.”

I started my own run and took off almost right away. From above, I was able to see Celestia take off successfully, but almost immediately, the chute collapsed. I flew down to a Celestia, who was picking herself off the ground. “Almost got it, remember from the talk, you can’t go collapsing the thing when you take off. Let’s try again, now follow me as I pack the chute.” I started packing the parachute and Celestia followed what I did, packing it correctly. “Now try again and I will run besides you, and guide you through on how to do it.”

“And why didn’t you do that the first time?” she asked.

“Part of the learning. It’s helpful for the student to try once without instruction, as so they see that they can’t do everything. At least that is what I feel on the mater. Let’s try again”

We went through two hours before it was time to end the lesson. “Very good. You were able to take off a total of ten times, six of those, you collapsed the chute right away, three of them, you almost turned yourself into the ground, and the last one you were able to get off the ground successfully, and got the timing for collapse correct, albeit with instruction, congratulations. Now, unfortunately, our time together today has come to an end.” I said while walking to the table where I had everything else set up. Rummaging through the mess that was the signup sheets, I grabbed the folder that had Celestia’s schedule. Giving them to her, I told her, “Now here is the schedule for your lessons. Knowing the weather is very useful for planning like this.” I handed her a paper in exchange for the pack she was using. “Now untangling your chute will most likely take the rest of the day, so you can pick it up tomorrow. For the next week, I want you to practice this take off method, and figure out how to land. And please don’t do that alone, I have the correct distance written with that, so I want the person you are having supervise, watch you, and tell you when to collapse, and hopefully, you will get to the point, if you practice enough, to not need that. I also won’t charge you for untangling the chute this time, but I might need to if it happens again. Also, if I find any major tears, you might need to buy a new one. When practicing, make sure you do it in an open soft space so that you don’t tear the chute, or hurt yourself”

After that, we went our separate ways, me with three parachutes, and Celestia back to Canterlot. I decided to stop by Rarity’s first to buy another Parachute before heading to my house to drop the chutes off, bring my house down move everything into it, and return the items that I had borrowed. Upon arriving at Rarity’s, however, I was confronted by six ponies, each with different expressions. Twilight looked pissed, Pinkie Pie looked excited, Rainbow looked in awe, Fluttershy looked, well, shy, Applejack looked slightly confused, and Rarity looked pleased.

The first to speak was Twilight, “Now could you call the Princess names!”

“Easy, she and I have come to an understanding on that.”

“And what kind of understanding is that?”

“Hold on there, little pony, one question per pony. Who’s next?”

Applejack took up the next one, “Ok, but how did y’all get Celestia to just give up like that? I mean I ain’t never seen somepony give up like that.”

“We~ll,” I started hesitantly, “I decided to screw with her mind a tad bit, and I think, I might have broken it a bit.”

“BROKEN IT!!! WHAT THE HEY DO YOU MEAN BY THAT!?!” Twilight was in a frenzy over this.

“Twilight, Twilight. I do believe I said one question per pony.”

“He did! He did! He did say that. OO, OO let me ask next. Can you teach me how to fly one of those parachute thingies!!!!” like I said, Pinkie Pie was excited.

“Of course Pinkie Pie. Did you write your name down on this appointment sheet?” I asked getting a vigorous nod. “Good, I will see you at the appropriate time then. I look forward to our meeting.”

“Hey that’s not fair, you have asked more than one question!” Twilight pointed out.

“Shut up Twilight. Life isn’t fair.”

“Hey, y’all don’t be telling my friend here to ‘shut up’, yah hear?”

“More than one question Applejack; therefore, your previous sentence is invalid. Next ‘Valid’ question please.”

“That was so cool how you got Celestia to sit like that! You have got to teach me how to do that!” Rainbow demanded.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that she would appreciate it if I did that. And also, it is fun to be the only one to have leverage over a princess, like that. Anymore?”

“Um, I would just like to say, thank you for letting me use your house.” Fluttershy said very softly.

“No problem, I like helping friends. Rarity, I can kind of sense that you don’t have anything to ask me, and that you are just proud to have something you made used by a princess. So I will just get to the point of me being here. Seeing as I only have two parachutes currently, I would like you to make another one for me. I will also be needing some more later on, but will have to get to that when I have collected money from lessons.” I left 204 bits with Rarity and left after saying one last thing. “Oh, and I will be getting that doll back to you after I have gathered everything back up. Currently, it is almost all back at the park and will be going back there almost immediately. And thanks again for the thing we had between us.” I finished

“Don’t mention it dear, I love secrets anyways.” She replied, telling only the truth, being only a secret between us. And the others should have known that we were just messing with them, as we have already told them this. But instead, they almost all turned red, except for Twilight really, who was already red.

And I was off once more to do the things that I had set out to do that day, and I completed them all. I even was able to preview who I was to visit the next day.

Author's Note:

Yay... Tenth Chapter!!!