When Wings are Earned

by Keeper of time RD

Chapter 4: When Wings Are Earned

The weekly flight lessons had become about learning pegasus weather magic. And that frequently devolved into practicing kicking lightning and that tended to result in the two pegasi being chased out of Ponyville for making too much noise. Somewhere along the line they adopted the practice of just starting the lessons in the middle of nowhere.

However, today was not a day for flight lessons turned weather control lessons. Today was for crusading. All that was missing were Scootaloo’s friends. Hence why she was currently on her scooter joyriding through town, awaiting the appointed hour when her friends would be done with their chores.

The thought brought Scootaloo’s eyes to a nearby clock tower. Frowning as she realize that it was time to meet her friends right now, and unless she somehow learned teleportation in the next few seconds she’d be late to meet them at the lake as they had agreed. Not that her concerns meant anything now. She powered her wings and rocketed off on her scooter, knowing that she might be a little late but at least she wouldn’t have to keep her friends waiting long, maybe a few minutes or so.

Scootaloo buzzed past the last building on the northeast edge of town and spotted her friends on the far side of the crystal clear, blue waters of a crescent shaped lake. Her friends each had fishing poles set up by them, with a spare waiting for Scootaloo once she arrived.

Then she saw the menacing figure made of living wood, a timberwolf, prowling out of the bush mere yards behind her friends.

“Look out!” Scootaloo cried, waving her front legs franticly. But her friends were too distant to hear her words and only smiled and waved back. Powering her wings as best she could, Scootaloo did the only other thing she could think to do. Scream at the top of her lungs, “Rainbow Dash! Heeelllp!”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle turned to each other sharing perplexed looks on their faces. Apple Bloom was the first to put the question on both their minds to words, “Did she just say ‘help’?”

“I think so. But I don’t see anything wrong with her,” Sweetie Belle answered, as they looked back at their friend. The two fillies could see the look of panic on their friend's face as she rushed toward them. But other than being panicked there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with their pegasus friend that would justify calling for help like that.

With their curiosity peeked a sound that otherwise would have been ignored caught the two fillies ears. The sound of grass crumpling behind them. Turning to inspect the sound the two friends saw the timberwolf halfway out of a nearby bush. And not just any timberwolf, an oakwolf, one of the tougher breeds of timberwolf. The two fillies screamed and ran, not necessarily in that order.

Scootaloo breathed a sigh of relief. At least her friends had seen the threat and were now running around the lake’s edge. Veering to the left, Scootaloo aimed to meet them halfway.

Her relief didn’t last long though, she may not have understood the numbers behind it, but Scootaloo could still calculate intercept rates and angles in a heartbeat. And everything she knew about weaving through a crowded street on her scooter told her that the timberwolf was going to reach her friends well before she could.

Scootaloo’s eyes drifted back to the small strip of land jutting out into the lake and the unfinished dock on it. A set of wooden planks were propped up by the end post, making a decent makeshift ramp. She knew she couldn’t clear the lake ramping her scooter. But if she could get high enough, she might be able to fly-glide the rest of the way across and the straighter path would definitely get her to her friends before the timberwolf.

Scootaloo veered back toward the dock. She wasn’t sure she could make it across the lake at all but she knew she couldn’t make it with any extra weight, so she ripped her helmet off and let if fall to the ground behind her as she pushed her wings like never before.

Hopping her scooter onto the makeshift ramp, she coiled her back legs before shooting into the sky. As she felt the scooter reach the peek of it’s arch she jumped as hard as she could, sending the scooter down into the lake like a depth charge. Instantly she straightened her body into a flight configuration and changed her wings from scooter style to flight style wing beats.

Turning left, to set herself on an intercept path to her friends, Scootaloo saw that she was going to overshoot and corrected to the right a little. She had to correct to the right a second time to account for her acceleration. Scootaloo’s conscious mind failed to notice the implications that flying straight and level and accelerating under her own power meant she had achieved true flight.

Countless scooter crashes had taught Scootaloo that you never want to crash hard with your legs straight, so she bent her front knees ever so slightly. She also tensed the muscles in her neck in preparation to pull her head up. Once her legs had taken as much of the impact as possible, she wanted her chest to be the second thing to hit the timberwolf, not her head.

Scootaloo’s mind did catch these thoughts. That’s my plan? Tackle it like a living cannonball?! What kinda idiotic plan is that?! Despite her inner chastisement it was the only plan she had and more importantly she had already past the point of no return, so the only thing she could do now was see the plan through and let the chips fall where they may.

Apple Bloom was certain that she truly understood what her Granny Smith had meant when she had told the tale of when she had ‘run faster then she had in her life.’ Now also with a timberwolf on her tail, Apple Bloom was certain that she had just shattered her personal best time at the hundred-yard dash.

If she could just reach her friend Apple Bloom thought everything would be okay. Wait. Why would that help? She asked herself. If the timberwolf was willing to chase two fillies why wouldn’t it chase three? Scootaloo had her scooter, maybe she was planing on using it as a makeshift club. Yeah that has to be it. The earth pony filly reassured herself.

Thinking of her friend, where was Scootaloo? Apple Bloom knew her friend couldn’t fly but she was still the fastest pony on four wheels and she was certain she saw her pegasus friend heading around the lake the last time she saw her. Scootaloo should have been in her field of view by now. But there wasn’t anypony there.

The sound of water being disturbed caught Apple Bloom’s ears. Looking out over the lake she saw her pegasus friend flying right at her like a rocket, a small ‘V’ shaped wave of water being kicked up from the force of Scootaloo’s wake.

This revelation didn’t evade Apple Bloom’s mind. She would have cheered for her friend for finally learning to fly if another sound hadn’t caught her ear first, and the terrible implications that came with it, if it was what she thought it was. Looking behind she saw that Sweetie Belle had tripped. The timberwolf leapt. And with what she was certain was her last breath the unicorn filly screamed.

As loud as Sweetie Belle’s death cry was the thundering crack that sounded of splintering wood that came a fraction of a second latter was louder, and was even heard all the way in Ponyville’s marketplace. Hearing only the latter sound most ponies dismissed it as that of a tree falling somewhere in the distance.

One pegasus, however, knew better. She had thought she had heard a call for help from this side of town. With the new sounds to guide her, Rainbow Dash’s eyes locked onto a nearby lake. Three of the four figures on the far side of the lake were instantly recognizable. Just from the color scheme she knew the three smaller figures were the cutie mark crusaders.

A second of diving toward the distant figures was all it took for Rainbow Dash to realize the larger fourth figure was a rather mangled looking timberwolf limping towards an equally mangled looking Scootaloo. And now Apple Bloom was charging towards the timberwolf too. “Pony feathers,” Rainbow Dash muttered, as she put every ounce of strength into her dive.

Sweetie Belle sat paralyzed in fear. She had been a moment away from death, and now the death that had almost been her own was creeping ever closer to her savior. Pure horror practically made Sweetie Belle's heart stop when she saw Apple Bloom run past her toward the timberwolf. The thought of losing one friend was bad enough. The thought of losing both of her best friends was more than she could bear.

Sweetie Belle didn’t think Apple Bloom could take a timberwolf in a fight. She didn’t care how badly the timberwolf was limping. Limping. The revelation made Sweetie Belle realize that Apple Bloom wasn’t charging the wooden wolf, but was running at Scootaloo. If they could reach their pegasus friend first they could carry her away from the timberwolf faster than it could limp. But alone, not even Apple Bloom could hope to pull that off. The fear that had previously paralyzed Sweetie Belle now pushed her as she joined in Apple Bloom’s charge to aid their friend.

“Scootaloo!” The panicked cry of her friends dragged Scootaloo’s mind from unconsciousness. The waking world greeted the filly's mind with an assault of pain. Her eyes focused on the timberwolf mere feet away, limping toward her.

She tried to stand but the instant she tried to move her front legs they exploded in pain. A glance showed her that they were still straight and they didn’t look to be broken, but they sure felt that way. Looking to her friends, Scootaloo saw that the impact with the timberwolf had sent herself and the wolf tumbling quite the distance from the lakeshore.

Once again everything Scootaloo knew about scooter riding told her that the timberwolf would reach her first. Even under the most hopeful calculation, she figured the timberwolf would have a good six seconds to do whatever it wanted with her. More than enough time to deliver a fatal wound.

With her front legs unwilling to aid her, Scootaloo tried to scoot herself away from the timberwolf. But the soft dirt at her hind legs was too lose and gave way as she pushed on it. Without her front legs she couldn’t right herself enough to get any traction with only her hind legs, she was stuck on her side.

Looking back at her friends, part of her wanted to play the heroic martyr and tell them to just save themselves. But the part of her that wanted to live couldn’t give up the only hope of rescue no matter how impossible it seemed. Looking back into the timberwolf’s glowing-green eyes Scootaloo knew the truth. She was going to die.

Lost, alone and starving the timberwolf limped toward the only prey it could hope to catch. It saw in the pegasus filly’s eyes that she knew the end was near. It was nothing personal that was just the way of nature. Win and live, lose and die. The timberwolf thought. Though it could respect the pegasus filly for her warrior’s instinct, while the other two had run from it, the pegasus had tried to fight by charging in.

“Scootaloo!” the two that had evaded it called out again.

Looking over, the timberwolf saw the two healthy pony fillies were still charging right at their injured friend. Not that it mattered, the timberwolf knew it would reach the fallen pegasus first and if the other two insisted on joining their friend in its belly the starving timberwolf wasn’t about to complain.

A radiant flare of prismatic light illuminated the skies behind the timberwolf. The look of fear in the pegasus filly’s eyes vanished in an instant, a smile even graced her face as she said, “You’re in for it now.”

The timberwolf recalled how ignoring the sound of water being pushed by air had allowed the pegasus filly to blindside it when pouncing at the unicorn filly. Refusing to repeat the same mistake twice the timberwolf took the second to look at the source of the strange light.

A prismatic shockwave was tearing its way across the sky, a radiant white flare at its center. And from the center of the flare came a rainbow trail. Tracing the rainbow to its source the timberwolf saw a sky blue pegasus mare shooting across the lake like living lightning, with towering walls of water being kicked up in her wake.

The timberwolf realized something was missing from the scene before its eyes. It heard nothing. It had heard the sound of the filly shooting across the lake, so why couldn’t it hear this clearly much larger disruption to the lake? Suspecting the truth the timberwolf turned to the injured filly on the ground. The wolf lowered its twig-like ears in defeat and with its eyes tried to convey its final thought that pegasi were truly worthy opponents.

Scootaloo didn’t know what the look in the timberwolf’s eyes meant. It seemed like a mix of respect and something else. She only had an instant to try and figure it out though as the timberwolf disappeared in an instant, replaced by a rainbow that obscured her vision.

The injured filly didn’t even notice the pain as a pressure wave from her hero’s wake slammed into her, pressing her into the dirt. What she did notice was the intense ringing in her ears that drown out all other sound. And of course what she saw, there before her, inches above her face, was a rainbow wake born of a sonic rainboom. Scootaloo wanted so badly to just reach up and touch it but her front legs still refused to move. However, her neck did obey and she pushed her nose into the rainbow that obscured her view of all else. Unlike the rainbows made from liquid rainbow this one had no form to her and let her press her nose through it. She could, however, feel energy in the air where the sonic rainboom rainbow was. Satisfied, she laid her head back down and stared into rainbow until it faded with one thought echoing through her mind. I’m still alive.

“And don’t you dare even think of laying a paw… on…” Rainbow Dash cut off her threat, as she felt the lifelessness of the timberwolf in her grasp. The rampant sticky feeling on her legs told Dash that the timberwolf had suffered a fatal injury. She knew she hadn’t been gentle grabbing up the timberwolf but she hadn’t meant to kill it. Holding the timberwolf away from her body, she saw the deep impact marks in its side and at their center were two hoof-prints imbedded into the wooden creature. Hoof-prints that were too small to belong to Rainbow Dash.

Recalling the scuffmarks in the sand and dirt between the lakeshore and where the timberwolf had been, Rainbow Dash realized what must have happened and why her less than gentle removal of the timberwolf had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. She whispered, “Wow, Scoots really clobbered you huh?”

With no point in trying to shoo the timberwolf back into the Everfree Forest, Rainbow Dash dropped the dead creature’s body unceremoniously from her grasp. Pausing for a moment to check the field below when she realized how reckless it had been to drops something of that mass from this height. Satisfied that nopony was below to get hit by the falling corpse, she swung wide, returning to Scootaloo from over the lake, taking only enough time to drag her legs through the lake water to rinse the sap from them.

Cringing as she landed next to Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash looked the bloody mess of a filly over. Dash’s fears quickly faded, as a quick examination revealed that Scootaloo looked much worse than she was. The blood that coated the filly’s chest hadn’t come from any deep wounds but instead from a thousand tiny splinters, in truth the filly was hardly bleeding at all.

Rainbow Dash asked something, but to Scootaloo her hero’s voice sounded a mile away through the ringing in her ears. However, the worried look on her face said enough. “I… I’ll live. I think I cracked my front legs. And it sounds like you guys are a mile away with all this ringing in my ears. Oh my scooter is at the bottom of the lake.” Scootaloo railed off everything she could think worthy of reporting to her hero.

Dash smiled. Leave it to a young dare devil like Scootaloo to be able to feel the difference between a cracked bone and a broken one.

“I need you two at sweet apple acres, now,” Rainbow Dash commanded the two healthy fillies.

“But what about the scooter? We could…” Apple Bloom started to protest.

“I’ll come back for it latter. Right now I need to get Scoots to the hospital and I don’t have time to see if there are anymore timberwolves prowling around,” Rainbow Dash interrupted, before the earth pony filly could finish.

Sweetie Belle gave Apple Bloom a look that seemed to agree with Rainbow Dash and the two friends ran off toward town. Scooping Scootaloo up as gently as she could, Dash cringed as she felt the filly flinch in pain from the forced movement of her front legs. With that the two were off into the sky.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo was doing her best to lay still in the hospital bed while the nurse and Rainbow Dash plucked splinters from her chest. She winced as the nurse managed to pluck a fur hair or two along with a splinter. In contrast she barely even felt anything when Rainbow Dash removed the next splinter in her sights.

“You’re really good at this,” Scootaloo said to her hero.

“You know how ghastly gorge is my favorite personal practice course. Well halfway through it there’s these huge bramble bushes that are a good challenge to fly through and… let's just say my first couple of times might have involved a crash and a lot of time plucking thorns from myself,” Rainbow Dash said, with a bit of a blush on her cheeks.

A knowing smile graced Scootaloo’s face. There was no way Rainbow Dash got this good with only a couple crashes into thorn bushes. However, the filly stayed quiet, content to let her hero’s story stand.

With the last of the splinters removed and a quick cleaning later, the nurse had just finished wrapping a bandage around Scootaloo’s chest when the doctor returned, x-ray images in tow. “Well the good news is your bones only seem to be cracked, not broken. You seem to have two cracks in your left leg and one in your right.” He said, pausing for a moment to make sure the filly was listening, “judging from your record here I trust you know what that means?”

“Zero weight on them,” Scootaloo recited from memory.

“For a full week. Even though they will feel like they can take it after only a few days,” the doctor added. “Now normally I wouldn’t give a filly your age a choice but given that I know you, I’ll let you tell me. Will I need to put a hard cast on them to make sure you follow orders or can you be trusted with just the splints and soft wrap on them now?”

With the medical wrap and splints keeping her legs straight holding them up was doable with an acceptable level of pain in Scootaloo’s mind. And if she could get the doctor to treat her like a grownup in the presence of her hero that was even better. “I can stay off them with just these.”

“For a full week?” the doctor asked.

“For a full week,” Scootaloo answered, with as serious a look as she could muster.

The doctor didn’t seem to be buying her tough girl act. But before he could say anything a shout from the hall interrupted his pondering. “Hey! You can’t come back here like that! This is a hospital!”

The target of the yelling soon presented itself as a sopping wet gray pegasus mare with a yellow mane flew into the room. Simultaneously, one of the mare’s eyes fell on Rainbow Dash and the other found Scootaloo.

Scootaloo’s eyes fell on the scooter held by the soaked mail mare. “My scooter! Thank you! But… how did you know it was in the lake?”

“That’s a funny story. Somehow I had mail in my bag for sweet apple acres, even though it’s not on my part of the route. Anyway when I delivered it I ran into Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and they looked like they were worried about something. So I asked and they told me about Rainbow Dash taking you here and sending them home before they could get your scooter out of the lake.”

“So just like that? You went to fetch the scooter?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Yep, I love a good excuse to go diving! If you hit the water just right you can make this really pretty field of bubbles!” the soaked mail mare answered, inadvertently drawing the attention of everyone in the room to her cutie mark depicting several bubbles.

“Did you at least take off your mailbags before you jumped in the lake?” Rainbow Dash’s question was clearly rhetorical, as the trickle of water coming from the mailbags already answered it.

“No, why?” the mail mare answered anyway. Then looking to her mailbags added, “Oh, oops.”

“You might want to go dry those out before you deliver the rest of the mail,” Rainbow Dash suggested, having already opened the window wide enough for a pegasus to comfortably fly out.

“Thanks. Get better soon!” the ever-cheerful mail mare said, as she departed.

Sliding off the bed Scootaloo ended up sitting upright on her scooter. Then gently resting her front legs on the handlebars, she fired up her wings gently, and did a slow figure eight in the tight space available before asking, “Can I go home now?”

The doctor pondered the question for a moment before nodding, “I suppose if Miss Dash here is willing to take you home, I can let her sign you out.”

* * * * * * *

A few minutes latter and Scootaloo was motoring her way slowly down the road, away from the hospital with Rainbow Dash walking beside her. It was Dash that spoke first, “Scoots, remember today.”

“Umm okay, why?”

“Because pegasi like you are rare. But of all the pegasi I’ve met that learned to fly super late, they all had one thing in common. The awesome story of the day they learned to fly. And they all phrased it the same way. ‘The day they earned their wings.’ Today, the way you defended your friends, I’d say you did just that.”

Rainbow Dash paused for a moment to look into Scootaloo’s eyes. She saw the distant look in filly’s eyes, reveling that she was too lost in thought to respond, so Dash continued, “From what I saw, I’m guessing you flew across the lake and tackled the heck out of that timberwolf to save your friends.” Scootaloo nodded but said nothing, so her hero continued, “But what I want to know is how did your scooter end up in the lake?”

“I had to ramp off the unfinished dock to get airborne… I flew… under my own power… I really flew didn’t I?” Scootaloo said, only when the words had come from her own mouth did the realization of the day’s events finally hit her.

“You sure did Scoots. A scooter assisted takeoff huh? I’d like to see that someday. Though I guess with your front legs out of commission landing would be a bit hard. Walking too. Guess you’re going to be scooter-bound for the next week huh?”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Scootaloo answered, smiling. Somehow that thought didn’t bother her at all.

Comments

[Blahman2816]

This...story...
This is a REALLY good story.

I can see lots of places for improvement and some spelling errors mixed between the chapters, but this STORY. I love it, even though I've seen the concept a thousand times over. You did a really nice job with this, and you should be happy.

Oh, and if you need an editor, which I highly recommend, I got you covered.

[tirilee]

Very nice done! I really liked it - couldn't stop reading
...

[clockworkangel]

awww!

[lightfox lowell]

A good idea, solid world building, and good flow. Yep this is a great story. Well done and keep up the good work.

Stay awesome!

~Lightfox Lowell

[Keeper of time RD]

Thank you everyone for the kind comments.

[CMC4TW]

Some of the ideas in this story could be something of note in writing a good story... Do you have a sequel to this yet?

[Keeper of time RD]

4247177

Oh? What caught your eye? And ideas did you want to see expanded on?

Also my stories generally share the same lore universe. And while I wouldn't call them 'sequels' this story plants seeds that can be seen in some of my other stories.

[CMC4TW]

4248234

While flight and mentoring have been somewhat commonplace in the fandom, your explanation as to how the Sonic Rainboom works is unique among stories I've read so far. If you could turn this into an adventure series, I could see Scoots and Dash being a major focus. I'd recommend that you improve certain things like show and tell, grammar and sentence structure before trying to do so, however. Punctuation is another thing you probably need to work on; perhaps the most actually, as you're missing a ton of commas and even using them at inappropriate times.

[Kenshinryuu]

Last chapter had the best landing ever.... THIS CHAPTER HAD THE BEST TAKE OFF! And then Rainbow doing a Rainboom Tackle on the Timberwolf to finish it off, pure awesome! I'm a little disappointed this didn't earn Scootaloo her Cutie Mark, it would have been an appropriate moment!

[Keeper of time RD]

4543633

Oh wow, it's been a while since I've gotten any feedback on this one. I'm glad you enjoyed the story.

As for the no cutie mark. Many of my stories are meant to be self-contained stories that happen to be in the same lore universe, so they often share threads that bind them together into a larger story line.

And judging from your comments you've already seen the cutie mark story I went with for Scoots.

[agentrenamon]

Just found this one; and its going into a certain Private Library listing for when I need an extra-good story to pass the time. I do plan to try some more of your stories soon....

[Keeper of time RD]

5320930

Thank you. I hope I some of my other stories entertain you as well.

[Keeper of time RD]

7301938

Glad I could entertain.

Though in all fairness, I was trying to show Dash being a little reckless/over confident in Scoots there. It just turned out to be a risk that paid off because she just so happened to be right in thinking that Scootaloo could pull it off.