When Wings are Earned

by Keeper of time RD

Chapter 1: Courage

Courage, that was what Scootaloo needed right now. How long had the orange pegasus filly with the purple mane been gazing up at that small cloud with the prismatic tail hairs draped over the edge? Truth was she didn’t know. What she did know was that the pony she idolized was napping on that low-lying cloud. Scootaloo longed to just fly up to that cloud and wake her idol gently to ask for help. Of course if she could do that then she wouldn’t need to ask for help at all. So she sat there trying to muster the courage to wake her personal hero.

Glancing around the park Scootaloo saw that she had it more or less to herself and the sleeping pegasus above. Now was as good a time as ever she figured and so she called out, “Rainbow Dash!” The prismatic tail on the cloud flinched, then settled bask into place. Scootaloo called out a second time. This time the tail disappeared and was soon replaced by the sky blue face of the filly’s hero.

“Oh, hey squirt. What’s up?” Dash asked, with a single eyebrow raised over her rose red eyes.

Now that the question was posed there was no going back. Sighing Scootaloo answered, “I wanted to ask, can you help me with something?”

Rainbow Dash ran a hoof through her prismatic mane, pondering the question for a moment. Sometimes helping out the crusaders meant watching their hilarious attempts to earn their cutie marks. But other times the attempts could prove quite boring to watch or tedious to help clean up afterwards. Then she caught the filly’s choice of words, namely ‘help me’ not ‘help us’.

“What did you have in mind?” Dash asked, with her eyebrow still raised, trying not to commit to anything until she thought it would be worth her time.

Not the response Scootaloo was hoping for, but at least it wasn’t a ‘no’, so she gathered what little courage she could and blurted out, “Can you teach me to fly?”

Rainbow Dash put on a confident smile in response the question. She knew Scootaloo was a weak flyer so this question had to come eventually. “No problem Scoots! What did we want to start on? Loop-d-loops? Spiral dives?” she asked, performing each as she came down from the cloud to land at the filly’s side.

“Getting off the ground,” Scootaloo answered, lowering her ears and purple eyes, turning away.

“Heh, I actually had you going there didn’t I,” Rainbow Dash laughed for a moment.

“Yeah, guess you did,” the filly answered with a weak flutter of her wings. but still hanging her head low. A blush appearing on her cheeks, through her fur.

Dash pondered the situation seriously for a moment before saying, “Okay enough fun and games, let’s get you airborne.”

“Really? You’ll teach me!?” Scootaloo asked, smiling ear to ear.

Recalling a certain camping trip Rainbow Dash answered, “Of course I will! I said I’d take you under my wing, didn’t I? Come on.”

* * * * * * *

The two soon found themselves in the grassy field under Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, away from the prying eyes of passersby. “Alright, show me what you’ve got,” Dash commanded her student.

Bringing her wings to life and angling all her thrust straight down, Scootaloo coiled her legs and leapt as high as she could. Hovering there for a moment before she wobbled some, and then came down, having to catch herself with her front legs to keep from hitting the ground. Pushing herself off with just her front legs she wobbled again, this time having to set her hind legs down to stop the fall. Once more she thrust herself upward only to get the same result, again catching herself with her front legs to stop her body from touching the ground.

“That’s enough,” Rainbow Dash said bluntly.

Scootaloo set her remaining hooves down and stopped trying to fly. “Was I that bad?” she asked.

“No, well maybe, I don’t know. But I can’t see what I need to, to figure out what you’re doing wrong,” Rainbow Dash answered, semi-distracted as she was trying to think of an alternate way to get the information she needed. “Try firing up your wings the way you do on your scooter,” she suggested.

Scootaloo obeyed, and fired up her wings scooter style, the dirt under her hooves gave way and she started sliding forward. First she slowed her wings then Dash’s hoof pressed agents her chest, stopping her forward movement.

“Don’t stop,” Rainbow Dash commanded.

Nodding Scootaloo brought her wings back up to speed. She became curious as to how this was supposed to help anything. Then she noticed her mentor holding out her own wing just over Scootaloo’s wing. Dash then moved her wing behind and then below Scootaloo’s wings, feeling the air currents the young pegasus was kicking up with her wings.

“You can stop now,” Rainbow Dash said, with a bit of a forced smile and a nod.

Seeing the expecting look on her student’s face, Rainbow scrambled in her mind to come up with something to say, ultimately going with the blunt truth, “Okay two things. First, stop wasting your time trying to hover. Second, you need to stop using a high speed wing-form when aiming for basic flight.”

“Wha-huh?” was Scootaloo’s first response. Once she'd let her mentor’s words filter through her mind she added, “What’s a high speed wing-form?”

“It’s the way you beat your wings, in your case, the way you leave them fully extended on both the up and down beats and just change the angle to get maximum thrust the whole time. A pure thrust arrangement like that if fine if you’re already flying really fast, but it's useless for getting off the ground to begin with.”

Realizing the first part of Rainbow Dash’s advice, Scootaloo timidly asked, “W-What, do you mean wasting my time trying to hover?”

Hearing the distress in the question, Dash realized she was treading on thin ice, and about to discourage her student. “Hey, I’m not saying you won’t hover. Its just clear that you’re a really weak flyer right now, so you need to get basic flight down before you move on to the hardest form of flight.”

“Hardest?” Scootaloo asked.

“Yeah, have you heard that saying about needing to learn to crawl before you can learn to run?”

“Yes.”

“Well flying is kinda backwards from that, in the air the faster you are going the easier it is to fly.”

Scootaloo pondered this for a moment before conceding it made no sense. “Really?” she asked.

Seeing Scootaloo didn’t get it, Rainbow Dash tried to think of how to make her student see the truth of her words. Extending her wings out to her sides she said, “Do this.” Scootaloo held her wings out to the side as well. “Good, now feel you wings,” Dash said, closing her eyes and adding a moment later, “Not like that.”

Scootaloo pulled her hoof away from her wing and looked back to her mentor. Rainbow Dash was just standing still, eyes closed and wings held out to her sides. Mimicking the pose she stood there for a few minutes until Dash broke the silence, “What do you feel?”

Standing still Scootaloo had to think about the question for a bit before she could find an answer. “I feel my wings getting a little tired.” Was all she could come up with.

“Why?” Rainbow Dash asked, breathing an unsatisfied sigh at her student’s response.

“Because I’m holding them up,” the filly said, not knowing how else to answer such an obvious question.

“And that makes you’re wings tired, because?” Dash said, egging her student on.

“Gravity pulls them down?” she answered, effectively restating the obvious.

“Good, keep your wings out and follow me,” Rainbow Dash said, finally satisfied.

Scootaloo opened her eyes and saw Rainbow Dash trotting off with her wings still held out to the sides, so Scootaloo ran after her. Every time she got near Dash, she sped up until Scootaloo was in a full gallop just trying to keep up.

“Slow down! I can’t run that fast!” Scootaloo called out, breathing heavily from the running.

Rainbow Dash looked back to her student and commanded, “Forget your legs, feel your wings.”

Between breaths the filly tried to obey, but with her legs crying out for rest it took awhile before she felt that she was no longer holding her wings up, but now she was holding them down. “They’re… tugging… up?” she said, confused and out of breath.

“Exactly, that’s what wings do. The faster you move forward the more lift they give you. That’s why hovering is the hardest form of flight, because you aren’t moving forward at all,” Rainbow Dash said, as she came to a halt and her thankful student flopped down beside her. “Yeah, you can take five. I’ll be right back,” Dash added, before taking off toward her cloud house.

Forward movement, why hadn’t Scootaloo noticed that upward tug on her wings when she rode her scooter? It seemed so obvious now that it had been pointed out to her, but she still couldn’t help but wonder how she hadn’t felt the difference between a moving wing and a stationary one before today.

The orange filly didn’t need much rest to recover from the earlier sprint. Which was good because Rainbow Dash didn’t take anywhere near five minutes to return, sporting an unknown cylindrical object, with a small tube coming out of its base, strapped to her front left leg.

“What’s that?” Scootaloo asked.

“An air speed gauge. I want to see what your minimum glide speed is,” Dash answered. “Anyway to do that I need you to show me your best glide form.”

“I can’t even fly. How am I suppose to show you how I’d glide?” Scootaloo whimpered.

The cyan pegasus rolled her eyes, this was going to be a long day. “Lay down and pretend you're flying. Now how would you hold yourself?”

Lying down in the grass, Scootaloo mimicked the form she had seen from most airborne pegasi. Holding her legs inline with the rest of her body and wings out to the sides.

“Not bad,” Rainbow Dash commented, while proceeding to take Scootaloo’s wing in her mouth and with her hoof force them into a slightly different form. “Think you can remember this form?” A nod was all the answer Dash needed before prompting her student to climb on her back.

Once Scootaloo had wrapped her legs around Rainbow Dash’s body her mentor wasted no time leaping into the air, and with a powerful beat of her wings the two were off into the sky. They flew higher and higher, leaving the cloud house far below. Passing low laying clouds and then the higher ones. Scootaloo wondered just how high Dash was going to take her.

Coming to a hover thousands of feet above the ground, Rainbow Dash said, “Alright get back into that glide form I showed you,”

Scootaloo froze as she realized what was about to happen. “You want me to jump? But what if I can’t glide?”

Dash laughed with her reply, “Trust me, you’ll glide. And besides I’ll be right next to you.”

That was enough for Scootaloo to release her grip on the pony holding her in the sky and flatten herself out, trying to get as close to the way she had practiced on the ground.

With a reassuring smile and a nod Rainbow Dash stopped flapping her wings and fell into a dive, immediately pulling herself away from underneath her student.

Scootaloo had expected being dumped into the open sky, but even so she couldn’t stop herself from a small yelp of surprise when it happened. Now that she was falling faster and faster through the sky, her eyes widened in fright as the ground below filled her vision. For a moment she spotted a sky blue wing off to her side, just far enough in front of her that she didn’t need to turn her head to see her hero was only feet away diving along side her. That thought calmed her enough to try and get back into her glide form.

New fears attacked Scootaloo’s mind as she noticed how much closer the ground seemed, even if it was still thousands of feet below. How fast was she falling now? Shouldn’t something have happened by now? She dared a glance to the side to see her mentor carefully watching her and immediately Dash’s hoof came out to her side.

“Eyes forward!” Rainbow Dash shouted, barely audible over the rush of the wind.

Scootaloo felt that her body was trying to swerve to the side rather than continue the straight down dive and Dash’s hoof was the only thing keeping her from doing so. Once she had pulled her head back inline she felt the pressure on her side fade and soon after the hoof holding her in line pulled away from her side.

Then the ‘something’ Scootaloo was waiting for happened. She felt something she had never felt before. The wind around her wings changed, she felt it stabilize and the slight upward tug became a mighty upward pull. At first it yanked her wings up from her side, but she was quick to pull them back into place. As soon as her wings were back in place she began pulling out of the dive. Within seconds she was shooting across the sky parallel to the ground.

“I’m flying,” she first whispered to herself, then she realized what she had just said and shouted, “I’m flying!”

“Gliding, now don’t move a muscle,” Rainbow Dash corrected, with a smile. Although her gaze never left the air speed gauge.

Gliding, flying, Scootaloo didn’t care about the difference right now. Because right now she wasn’t an intruder falling through the air anymore. For the first time in her life she was a part of the sky. For the first time, she belonged in the sky. “Yes ma'am!” she called out, finally acknowledging her mentor’s command.

Scootaloo had been gliding forward only a few seconds before she felt something in the air change. She was slowing down and with it the wind around her wings began to destabilize. The lift from her wings vanished as suddenly as it had come and she fell forward. “Rainbow Dash!” she cried, out in surprise.

“Relax I’m going to need you to stall a couple more times to figure out what I want to know,” Dash responded, in a calm voice.

Reassured that this was part of the plan, Scootaloo held her pose and trusted her mentor that everything would work out. As she fell she gained speed and the wind around her wings changed again. This time she was ready for it and stiffened her wings just before the lift returned. She pulled out of the dive much more smoothly then the first time.

Once more Rainbow Dash seemed focused on matching Scootaloo’s speed and watching the air speed gauge. Scootaloo didn’t mind though. She just rode through the dives and leveling out like a stair-stepped roller coaster. Until she dared to glance down and realized that they were rapidly running out of altitude. “Umm, Rainbow Dash, we’re…” she started.

“Running out of sky. Yeah I see can that too,” Rainbow Dash interrupted.

In an instant Dash had swooped below Scootaloo, pulling up and flaring hard she came up to collide with her student. As the two hit, Scootaloo wrapped her legs around Rainbow Dash’s body, and felt the lift from her own wings vanish once more as they continued to slow down.

Satisfied that the scary ordeal of having to be caught mid-flight, hundreds of feet off the ground, was over, Scootaloo folded her wings to her side and asked, “How’d I do coach?”

Rainbow Dash didn’t sound very enthusiastic when she gave the reply, “Seems your minimum glide speed is around two hundred and ten miles an hour.”

“Wow! Was I really going that fast?” Scootaloo said, her ears perking up with enthusiasm to spare at what she just heard. Her eyes darting around to the scenery and finding that even with only a few minutes of gliding they were several miles away from Rainbow Dash’s cloud house now.

“Yeah… The thing is, the point of glide practice is to get you minimum glide speed as low as possible,” Dash answered, hesitantly but honestly.

“Oh,” was all Scootaloo could say, as her enthusiasm deflated. Once she had gathered her thoughts a question accrued to her. “So, what’s yours?”

Tempted to give the filly the answer but not wanting to discourage her student any more, Rainbow Dash answered, “That’s not exactly a fair comparison you know. I am the greatest flyer ever after all. And besides young pegasi always have a higher glide speed than adults.”

“Then what should it be?” Scootaloo asked, persisting in wanting to find some way to gauge the numbers she had been given.

Dash sighed, not knowing how to say the truth in any other way then bluntly. “I think the average for fillies your age is around seventy or so.”

Scootaloo almost lost her hold on her mentor. Math was not among her strong points but even she realized that meant her minimum glide speed was triple what it should be.

Rainbow Dash felt her student’s dismay at this news but didn’t know what else to say, except to give the filly something to distract her mind by continuing the lesson. “So you’re a weak flyer, big deal we knew that going into this. What I need you to do now is watch the way I flap my wings on the way back okay?”

Nodding, Scootaloo fixed her gaze on her mentor’s wings. But remained silent the rest of the flight back to the field they had stared at.

Once Scootaloo’s hooves were safely back on solid ground she asked, “What now?”

“Now you show me you can flap your wings like that,” Rainbow Dash answered.

Opening her wings, Scootaloo tried to copy the way she had seen Dash flap her wings. Much to her dismay, she found she had to beat her wings slowly and deliberately to stop herself from slipping into her scooter mode of wing use.

Rainbow Dash watched her student’s attempt with her own wing out, to measure the airflow the filly’s wings were kicking up. “Twist your wings a little more forward. Back a bit. There perfect.” Dash told her student, looking the filly over and deciding that she was holding an acceptable wing beat pattern. “Okay that’s all I have time for today. But I want you to practice flapping your wings like that. I think I can fit you in wednesday after school. So keep yourself free, there’s someplace I want to show you.”

“Really? What is it?” Scootaloo said, perking up at the realization that Rainbow Dash was still offering to teach her to fly despite her poor performance today.

“If you want to know you’ll just have to come with me wednesday,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Aww…” Scootaloo said, flattening her ears in disappointment at the secrecy but still excited to be learning from her hero.

* * * * * * *

The week had crawled by at a snail’s pace for Scootaloo, but now that the appointed day was here she wished it had been longer still. For all the practice she had done she still couldn’t flap her wings quickly without slipping back into her scooter style and forgetting to fold her wings on the up stroke. Not that there was anything she could do about it stuck in her seat, in a one room schoolhouse, waiting for class to end. She was all out of practice time, soon class would end and Rainbow Dash would be waiting for her outside, and the butterflies in the filly’s stomach told her she still wasn’t ready.

The bell rang followed by Cheerilee’s dismissal and the usual rush of young ponies heading out the door. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle waited by Scootaloo’s side, “Is something wrong?” the white unicorn filly with the pink and purple mane asked.

“No, sorry Sweetie Belle, just distracted,” Scootaloo answered.

“Well go on, you don’t want to keep Rainbow Dash wait’n, now do ya?” the earth pony filly with the yellow coat and red mane asked, her ever present pink bow bouncing with her as she hopped to rush her friend toward the door.

“All right, I’m going, I’m going,” Scootaloo said, forcing a smile and trying to sound more happy than nervous.

Scootaloo’s friends wished her luck as they parted ways outside the schoolhouse. Now came the matter of finding her mentor. As it turned out Rainbow Dash wasn’t waiting right outside for her. Looking skyward she found not so much as a single cloud in the sky. Probably why Dash had chosen today for the lesson, she probably knew the weather schedule had called for clear skies today all along and that meant a quick round of cloud clearing in the morning and having the rest of the day to herself.

That thought didn’t help Scootaloo find her mentor though and the sudden realization that Rainbow Dash had never mentioned where they were going to meet today only made her more nervous. Where did her mentor expect her to go? She looked down at her saddlebags and thought. Of course Dash didn’t plan on picking her up at school, she would need time to ditch the extra weight. But where else would she be waiting? As far as Scootaloo knew her mentor didn’t even know where she lived, so that left the crusader’s clubhouse or Dash’s house.

Deciding on the latter Scootaloo pulled her scooter, with the blue baseboard and red wheels, up from its resting-place beside the schoolhouse and started to head home to drop off her saddlebags.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” a familiar voice called out from nearby.

Scootaloo didn’t answer, instead she took another look around, trying to find the source of her mentor’s voice. Quickly spotting a few strands of prismatic hair among the branches and a set of rose eyes peering through the leaves of a nearby tree she called out, “Rainbow Dash, you’re here!”

“Of course I’m here, I said I would be didn’t I?” Rainbow Dash answered back, as if it will be silly to think otherwise. Spotting the filly’s saddlebags Rainbow Dash noticed a small flaw in her plan. “So, where are we dropping off the extra weight?”

Scootaloo thought about it for a second, “The clubhouse is closest, wana race?”

“Oh you’re on!” Rainbow Dash answered, taking to the air and flying overhead as Scootaloo fired up her wings and powered her scooter forward at high speed.

The two raced along the streets of Ponyville, the brightly painted, though mostly some kind of cream color, wooden buildings marking the boundaries of their race. Dash flew low overhead dodging hanging signs, outstretched wooden beams, and occasionally brushing the amber waves of thatch roofs as she flew past. Below, Scootaloo wove her way through the colorful crowd of ponies, who were going about their ways on the streets of Ponyville, with relative ease and keeping pace with her airborne racing partner. They exited town heading down the dirt road to the seemingly endless field of apple trees known as sweet apple acres, trading lead several times. As the clubhouse came into sight Rainbow Dash blitzed ahead, landing on the balcony of the tree-house with enough time to land gently before Scootaloo set wheel on the ramp.

A quick moment of laughter between the two was all the time Scootaloo needed to roll her scooter inside the clubhouse and slide her saddlebags off her back. “Ready!” she announced, as she stepped back outside.

Rainbow Dash had already lowered herself to the floor, a nod of her head was all that was needed to get the filly to climb onto her back. A second later and they were leaving the apple farm far below. It only took a minute for Scootaloo to figure out where they were going, once Ponyville was behind them it was clear they were pointed right at the pride of pegasus cities, Cloudsdale.

“It will take some time to reach Cloudsdale, so you should use the time to memorize the way I flap my wings,” Rainbow Dash called back, to the filly on her back.

“Sure thing!” Scootaloo called back, over the winds.

With that, Scootaloo brought her eyes away from the rolling green hills, snowcapped mountains and fluffy clouds around her and focused on watching the light blue wings holding her aloft.

* * * * * * *

Once they had entered Cloudsdale, Scootaloo couldn’t help but take her eyes off her mentor’s wings. The towering cloud structures, with their stylized columns and designs that generally mimicked ancient stonework, shimmering in the sunlight, the fields of endless white cloud streets and the subtle blue hues the clouds had in the shade, the fountains of liquid rainbow, all captured her eyes. Back in Ponyville the only example of pegasus cloud buildings was Dash's cloud house, to be surrounded by an entire city made of clouds made Scootaloo's eyes light up like a foal's on hearth's warming morning. Only when she noticed the odd looks they were drawing from other pegasi, who noticed the filly riding on Rainbow Dash’s back, did Scootaloo look away from the grandeur of the cloud city around her.

As much as she tried to ignore the other pegasi around them Scootaloo couldn’t help looking at them to see if they were still looking at her with… what was that look in their eyes? Pity? Or was it curiosity? Whatever it was she saw it every time they spotted her wings. She knew that one way or another they were wondering why she wasn’t flying herself wherever she was going.

All of a sudden the looks from other pegasi stopped. Scootaloo looked around to find out why, but as far as she could tell this part of Cloudsdale was no different than the other streets they had flown down.

The answer came when the two landed and Dash announced, “This is it.”

Looking at the towering wall of cloud in front of her, Scootaloo's eyes found a doorway flanked by columns of crafted cloud. Above the doorway were the words ‘Cloudsdale Flight Practice Field.’ Yes, that had to be why the ponies near the field didn’t look at her oddly when they saw her riding another pegasus. In this part of town they probably knew that meant she was a weak flyer.

“What’s wrong?” Dash asked, seeing the filly less then excited to be at a proper training facility.

“Nothing, it’s just…” Scootaloo trailed off, trying not to sound ungrateful, “…when you said you wanted to show me someplace… I didn’t think you meant to take me somewhere that practically announces to the world that I’m the weakest flyer of all time.”

“Whoa, that’s not why we're here at all. Let's go inside, you’ll see why I brought you here,” Rainbow Dash said defensively.

After a moment of silence Scootaloo had to ask, “What are we waiting for?”

“For you to get off my back and walk through that door,” Dash answered.

Only then did Scootaloo realize that they weren’t flying anymore, and hadn’t been for some time. She looked down at the swirling water vapor at Rainbow Dash’s hooves. Scootaloo knew pegasi could walk on clouds, everypony did. But that didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t use to doing so herself.

Hesitantly she slid off her mentor’s back and let her hooves hit cloud. The clouds felt soft like standing on a pillow that had a lot of give. She took a timid step forward and paused, then another, then she heard Rainbow Dash giggling behind her.

“Sorry, I just realized you’ve never walked on clouds before. You look so funny acting like it’s thin ice or something,” she snickered, as she tried to hide the smile on her face.

“I have too walked on clouds before!” Scootaloo protested. The questioning look from her mentor prompting her to add, “Well kinda. I climbed up a fog bank, once.”

It took a moment for Rainbow Dash to suppress her giggling, but once recomposed she took the lead going up the steps to the practice field and prompted her student to follow. Scootaloo stood up straight and followed her mentor. As she ascended the steps she noticed that the cloud crafted steps were firmer than the unrefined cloud, and found that more comforting under her hooves than the street clouds.

Walking through the doorway Scootaloo found that she was mistaken to think the practice field was a building. True to its name the field was just that, the wall behind her was the only wall the facility had. Before her was a sort of balcony with no guardrail, instead the cloud floor had several lanes that ended in short clouds jutting out over the edge that reminded her of diving boards. And beyond them she could see an almost endless field of clouds. To either side of the field she could see rows of could-crafted homes from the neighborhoods on either side of the practice field, only the far end of the field was exposed to open sky.

The next thing that caught her attention was the ponies, lots of them. There must have been twenty or more filly and colts around, many getting ready to jump off one of the clouds. Some alone, others seemed to jump together. Some adult pegasi seemed to be watching intently while frequently flying out into the field and coming back with a young pegasus on their back.

A yellow blur of a foal fell past, screaming, as one would expect from an earth pony who fell off a cliff. The foal was followed immediately by a colt with a family resemblance, diving after his little sister. A second later Scootaloo heard a ‘foomp’ from the foal hitting the cloud field below. A few seconds after that the colt, about Scootaloo’s age, appeared again haling his little sister up by the mane.

Watching the two rise ever higher above Scootaloo notice the floor above them. It had the same designed as the one she was on, with several short ramps jutting out, marking the lanes. Having to guess, Scootaloo figured the second floor was a good hundred plus feet above the first.

Seeing her student watching the other young pegasi trying to fly Rainbow Dash leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “See? You’re not the only pegasus in the world that didn’t learn to fly by instinct alone.” Then in a normal voice thought aloud, “I’m going to go figure out how things work around… Oh now that’s cool. Check this out.”

Turning around to see what her mentor was talking about, Scootaloo found her looking at the posters along the wall behind them. Tracing her hero’s eyes, Scootaloo followed them past a wonderbolt poster to one that consisted of two pictures. The top picture was a prismatic shockwave exploding outward over the landscape, with a radian flare of white light at its center. The bottom picture was a rather awestruck image of her mentor standing on clouds with a small gold crown resting on her head. At the bottom of the poster was the text:

‘Rainbow Dash, winner of the best young flyers competition.
The only pegasus in living memory to perform the sonic rainboom.’

Scootaloo’s eyes went wide as she realized what she was looking at. She had seen that winged crown with a lightning bolt before when Rainbow Dash was showing it off after said competition. “Is this really from the competition?” she asked.

Looking the poster over a little more closely before she answered, “Top ones definitely the Rainboom I made that day… Hmm judging from the look on my face the bottom one must have been when they had just given me the winners crown… Yeah that was an awesome day,” Rainbow Dash said, smiling as her eyes lost focus. Then snapping back to the present added, “Hey! Why didn’t anypony tell me they made posters?”

Scootaloo noticed that the background chatter behind her was quickly turning to whispers. A quick glance revealed that many of the pegasi were now staring at the sky blue mare with the rainbow mane. “Um… Rainbow Dash, you seem to be drawing a lot of attention,” Scootaloo whispered to her mentor.

“Good. That’ll save me the trouble of finding somepony to tell me what we do to reserve a lane around here,” Rainbow Dash replied.

Sure enough, a few seconds latter an adult stallion with a gray coat and green mane approached them. “Well there’s one pony I never thought I’d see here. You’re Rainbow Dash right? Could I ask you a favor?”

“The one and only! What did you have in mind?” the aspiring stunt pony answered, with her usual show pony bravado.

“It’s not often that a famous flyer comes by here, so I was wondering if maybe you could take the time to put on a little show to inspire the little ones around here. You know just a few fancy moves, something to show them what a pegasus can really do if they work hard at their flying skills.”

Rainbow Dash was grinning ear to ear at the request. Knowing that Dash liked the attention, Scootaloo was beginning to worry that maybe her mentor would forget why they were here in the first place. A fear that immediately proved unfounded when she answered the stallion’s question, “Let us reserve the far right lane and you got a deal.”

“It’s all yours. You can put on the show anytime. Just try to keep your end of the deal before day’s end,” the stallion responded, taking note of the filly by the famous flyer’s side.

Soon Scootaloo found herself riding on Rainbow Dash’s back as they flew up to the higher levels. As they flew, the filly saw that there was a third floor much higher than either the first or second. Dash stopped at the second floor just long enough to bend the far right cloud ramp up into a makeshift wall and with her hoof scrawled the words ‘upper ramp in use’ on it before taking off again. The short stay only allowed Scootaloo time to notice that while fewer pegasi were using the second floor most of them were much younger than herself.

When they reached the third floor Scootaloo relaxed a little when she saw that it was empty except for herself and her mentor.

“Top floor everypony off,” Rainbow Dash announced, as she landed.

The observation was true enough. A quick glance confirmed that there were no more floors above them, not even a roof. Scootaloo then slid off her mentor’s back and stood up slowly. “Okay, so what now?”

“Before you go jumping off the launch cloud, Let’s see you flap those wings of yours,” Rainbow Dash said.

Scootaloo dug her hooves into the cloud to try and keep herself from moving, opened her wings, ran a mental check list through her mind, and began flapping her wings. She frowned as she tried to speed her wings up only to slip back into flapping them scooter style. She slowed them down and forced them to fold on the up-stroke again, but knew that she was beating her wings way too slowly to fly.

“Not bad,” her mentor commented. “Try putting more power in the down stroke. Remember the up-stroke is just to get your wings back to the top position of the cycle,” she added, opening her own wings and holding them high like she was about to take off.

Scootaloo obeyed and added ‘more power on down stroke’ to her mental list as she wished she could flap her wings like this without thinking about them. Just as she never had to think about her wings when riding her scooter.

“Twist your wings a little more forward… little more… good,” Rainbow Dash said. With one last look over her student, she nodded and gestured toward the cloud ramp. “Go for it, and don’t be afraid to tweak the way you’re holding your wings on the way down. I can tell you what I know, but in the end you’ll have to find the sweet spot that works for you yourself,” she added, flexing her wings a little forward and back to demonstrate different ways of holding her wings.

With a quick nod, Scootaloo walked up to the ramp, looked down, and froze. The cloud field below seemed awful far below, she knew that a pegasus had nothing to fear from falling onto a cloud but still her instincts told her to back away from the edge. “H-How high are we?” she asked.

Rainbow Dash looked at the wall behind them and pointed. Turned out the square-like spiral pattern along the top wasn't the only thing inscribed in the cloud wall, and Dash was pointing at large letters that formed the words ‘500 foot launch ramps.’

“Five hundred feet,” Scootaloo moaned under her breath. Then aloud added, “right, no problem. More power on down, fold on up, I can do this.”

Emboldened by the presence of her hero, Scootaloo gathered her courage, walked out onto the launch ramp, opened her wings and jumped as hard as she could into open space. She then fell like a rock. After a moment of twisting she got herself pointed straight down. A few seconds of free fall later and she remember to flap her wings. Panicking a little as she fell, she tried to speed up her wings and slipped into her scooter style of flapping her wings. She shot passed the second floor by the time she realized her error and started folding her wings on the up-stroke again. For a moment she thought she felt herself pulling out of the dive as she rushed past the first floor launch ramps.

Slammed into the cloud field below, she found the impact oddly soft. The clouds had all the give in the world yet at the same time resisted her forward movement like rubber or maybe an air bag. Once her momentum was gone the infinite softness of raw clouds returned as she lay motionless.

Even with her front half buried in the cloud she could hear the teasing and laughter of the other pegasus fillies and colts above her. Scootaloo wished she could just dig the rest of the way into the cloud and hide altogether. Being a pegasus she realized that she probably could. But she also realized that she didn’t know how thick the cloud was and the last thing she wanted to do was to accidentally dig all the way through.

The sound of laughter above had suddenly cut in half. Curiosity drove Scootaloo to pull herself free of the cloud. Shaking off the bits of cloud stuck in her mane she heard most of the rest of the laughing die out. Looking up it wasn’t hard to see why. Rainbow Dash was gliding slowly down toward her, and any pony that hadn’t noticed the pony from the poster before was noticing her now. Some of the young ponies were even doing double takes, looking back and forth between the pegasus before them and the poster wall behind.

“Wow that was awesome! I haven’t seen somepony crater like that since… summer flight camp…” Dash said, her cheerful tone trailing off as she mentioned the camp. Then her ears flattened and eyes narrowed in annoyance as she added, “…Dang Fluttershy was right.”

“Fluttershy was talking about me?” Scootaloo asked.

“What? No, it’s nothing like that, just that I realized her memories of a certain event were better then mine,” Rainbow Dash responded, glancing at the diving platforms above them for a moment.

“Heh, I see why you called it a crater,” Scootaloo said, blushing once she had climbed out of the hole her cash landing made.

“Yeah and a fairly impressive one too,” Rainbow Dash said, as she started filling in the crater.

With the field repaired, Scootaloo found herself once more being lifted back up to the top floor. She tried not to look at the other pegasi as they passed the first two floors. However, she did manage to find the signs that stated the first floor was at one hundred feet above the cloud field. And the second was two hundred and fifty feet.

“What’s wrong? You’re not going to let some foals poking a little fun at you stop you? Right?” Rainbow Dash asked, after waiting several seconds for her to jump a second time.

“What? No… Turkey, chicken, penguin, dodo, I heard it all before. I’m use it. I’m sure I’ve been called every flightless bird in the book by now. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to wait for them to stop laughing at me before I give them another reason to make fun of me,” Scootaloo said, with her eyes fixed on a colt on the second floor, easily half her age, who had just pointed up at her and was now flinching and laughing like he was under tickle attack.

“Is that all? Get ready to jump this won’t take long,” Rainbow Dash said, doing a back flip into a spiral dive.

In seconds she was living up to her promise to put on a show for all to see. Even Scootaloo felt inspired watching her mentor pulling impossibly tight high speed turns, loop-de-loops, flips and spins. More to the point, all the young ponies had clearly forgotten about Scootaloo’s embarrassing little crash-landing.

As soon as Rainbow Dash was at her side once more, a look and a nod from her mentor was all she need to jump again.

* * * * * * *

By the time her first real day at the flight training field has ended Scootaloo still wasn’t flying. She was, however, getting rather good at smoothing the clouds back out after her attempts. Once more on her mentor’s back, the filly looked out at Cloudsdale as they left it behind them and sighed. She had hoped she would do better then that, but for all the things she tried, the best she had done was to get one hundred feet down range before cratering into the cloud field.

Scootaloo’s eyes fell on the rolling hills north of Ponyville. Several things among the green hills caught her interest, but three of them especially interested her. Judging from gray color and layout, two of them looked like old ruins, and the third was a single metal building all alone, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

She didn’t know anything like that was in the hills north of town before. What interested her about these three things was that they seemed close enough to Ponyville that she and her friends could make it to them and back in under a day. Cutie mark crusader explorers. Scootaloo thought to herself with a smile. She may not have learned to fly but at least this trip hadn’t been a total waste.

“Hey Scoots, I’ve been thinking,” Rainbow Dash spoke up, for the first time since they’d left Cloudsdale. “How come your parents never taught you to fly?”

Scootaloo cringed at the question but a part of her knew it was inevitable. “Well dad works really hard, so even when he is home he always just wants to rest,” she responded in a low voice, and fixing her gaze at the base of Dash’s neck.

Rainbow Dash could tell from the lonely tone in her voice that this wasn’t a topic Scootaloo liked talking about, so she waited for a follow up but it never came. Not sure she wanted to risk it Rainbow Dash asked anyway, “What about your mom?”

Oddly enough Scootaloo didn’t hesitate at all to answer the question. “Oh she’s a secretary to a diplomat,” Scootaloo words were very matter-of-fact, as if she was answering a question at school on a topic she had no interest in.

“That doesn’t sound too hard. How come she didn’t teach you?” Rainbow Dash asked, before thinking anything through.

“I said ‘diplomat’, didn’t I? She’s almost never in Equestria and forget Ponyville,” Scootaloo shrugged off the question with emotionless ease.

“I get the feeling that you don’t like your mom,” Rainbow Dash mentioned, slightly troubled by the detached way her student answered the question.

“I don’t hate her. I just don’t know her,” Scootaloo said in her defense. Pondering for a moment she added, “I mean, I know why it has to be this way. And that I shouldn’t hate her for never being there for me. And dad always tells me that she loves me. But the only way I’ve found to stop myself from hating her is to think of her as just another stranger.”

Simply nodding, Rainbow Dash let the topic die. She had heard enough. Scootaloo’s father was too busy and her mother was absent from her life. It was no wonder nopony had taught her to fly yet.

Comments

[RaylanKrios]

This is my favorite mechanical explanation of scoots inability to fly that I've read yet. Great story.