Lighting Can Strike Twice

by Lightning_Colt

Chapter 1: First Flight

That tree was where it all began, I thought as I sat, staring at it, at the kitchen table. My head resting on my front hooves.
"Light"
I mean, a lot of ponies in Hoofington were born at Ponyville hospital due to Hoofington being small, the only pony even close to a doctor was my mother.
"Light!"
In my opinion she wasn't really a doctor, I though her to be more of a herbalist.
"LIGHTNING!"
The sudden use of my full name brought me out of my reverie as a small feather duster with a pale silvery aura around it dusted my face.
"Yes mother?" I questioned as I turned to face her.
"Here I am dusting the house top to bottom and here you are literally gathering dust!" She replied with a hint of annoyance in her voice. She brought the duster to a photo frame hanging on the wall.
"How long are you gonna keep that clipping hung up?"
Within the photo frame was a newspaper clipping with the headline 'Wedding of the Century', with an image of two unicorns, one wearing a regal uniform of the royal guard, with a white coat with different shades of blue in his mane and tail. The other was pale pink and had pink, lavender and a very pale yellow in her mane and tail, and wearing a beautiful wedding dress.
"It's never coming down"
"Mom, why do you need it up? Both you and dad were at Shining armour's and Princess Cadences' wedding". This was down to Princess Celestia requesting my dad to make the frame that was then decorated with flowers which stood behind her when she performed the ceremony.
The mare made a small frown at her son.
"What have I told you? Her name is Princess Mi Amore Cadenza!"
"Yes but she even told Princess Celestia that Cadence was fine"
"Even so, it's good to have proper manners"
"Whatever, I'm off to the tree" I replied as a trotted towards the door
"Oh wait!"
"Yes?" I replied
"Could you go see if your father needs any help at the shop?"
"Sure, no problem" I replied, closing the door behind me.

I stood on our doorstep for a moment while I allowed my eyes to adjust to the sudden change of light. I stretched forward with my front legs and unfurled my wings. Why do I keep stretching them? I don’t use them. I started down the street towards the centre of Hoofington where my father's workshop is. My dad's a very strange pony, in fact the entirety of my dad's side of the family is a bit strange. Even though all of my father's fathers were pegasi, they hated flying. They believed solely on keeping their hooves on the ground. It just so happens that all of them have been world renown for their carpentry skills

Once again, I had become so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn't noticed that I had already made it to my father's workshop. 'The Wooden Wings' was chiselled into a pair of… well, wooden wings hanging just above the entrance. I pushed the door open with my side and stepped in. A strong smell of sawdust and varnish barraged my nose as I recoiled slightly from the intensity. I wandered through the labyrinth of wood to reach the workshop at the back. I could see the door when my back leg knocked a neatly piled stack of two by fours and flinched as an almighty CRASH echoed throughout the entire building.

A dark crimson pegasus with a grey mane and moustache came rushing through the door to find me entangled within a pile of two by fours. "For Celestia's sake" he sighed.
"Mom sent me in case you needed any help".
"No" my father said with an unimpressed look on his face. "Listen Light, I'm gonna be closing up soon, so why don't you just go home?"
"Are you sure? I can stay if you wa-".
"Oh no no no!" he interrupted "I'll be fine".
"Okay" I replied, slightly disheartened as I slowly walked outside. I couldn't manage more than an amble as I made my way to the tree. I've stopped acknowledging people's stares and giggles as they walk past. I mean it isn't fun being sixteen years old and not having a cutie mark. Most ponies receive theirs around eight years of age so it is quite humiliating to not have one at my age.

I Make it to the tree and drop to my haunches. Even though people do make fun of me for not having a cutie mark, everypony in town knows that this tree is Lightning's tree. I come here when I'm happy, when I'm sad, When I don't know what I'm feeling, I just come here and think. I go over what my mother told me what happened when I was born. When I first heard it, I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I had been struck by lightning and survived! I don’t think there is a single pony around that can say that!

Relishing in the thought, I looked up at the cloudless sky wondering what it would be like to soar through the air, to have the wind in my mane and the complete freedom that flying brings to a pegasus. There have been times where I did try to fly, but my dad found out one way or another and grounded me, literally. I just stare and hope for the day I do fly.

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This is it! Today's the day! After months of preparation this is it. Today is the day I fly! I have been studying like crazy, reading every book I can get my hooves on with the slightest reference to flying. I got up before the sunrise to get ready, tossing my saddlebag on the bed. Running all over my bedroom collecting to gather items for my flying session. A blue book labelled "Flying 101", a pair of goggles, and a necklace that my parents gave me for my tenth birthday, it was a piece of metal worked into the shape of a lightning bolt I peered at it in the mirror as I brought it over my head. My mother thought it as a good luck charm, hasn't worked for me yet but that didn't stop me believing. I pull the saddle bag on and rush downstairs to the kitchen to find my mother dusting. "Ugh, don't you ever stop dusting?"
"It's good manners to have a dust free house" she replied musically. She turned around and stopped in surprise to see me 'saddled up' as it were. "Where are you going?"
"I'm off to Ponyville to pick up some stuff, will probably be out all day" I said nonchalantly as I grabbed some apples of the kitchen table and stuffed them into my bag. She raised an eyebrow gauging the reliability of my cover story.
"Okie dokie!" She replied "have fun!"

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and shouted "Love ya" and I left the house. I hated lying to my mother, mainly because she was so good at spotting when ponies were lying. I started to make my way down the road out of town towards Ponyville. I started going through a mental checklist for my flying session, weather; sunny and slightly breezy, check. High visibility, check. Flying 101 which included notes taken from Wonderbolts air shows, check.

I found a secluded part of the road, both Ponyville and Hoofington were just specs on opposite sides of the horizon. I settled down my saddlebag and started bringing out the contents. Leaning 'Flying 101' against a rock so I could read whilst stretching my hardly used wings. My wing's ached as I unfurled them, because they had been unused for so long I had to slowly spread them bit by bit. Once they were fully spread I started to read 'Flying 101' to refresh my memory.

When starting to fly, any pegasus needs to have these three basic necessities before they flap a single wing. The first to make sure that they are in a wide and open space, it is not a good idea to practice indoors or in an enclosed space, as you don't want to be breaking anything in your environment as well as yourself.

The second necessity is to make sure that your body is ready for flying. Many first starters would just start randomly flapping their wings and end up pulling a muscle. So make sure that your entire body is fully limbered up before you attempt a take-off. It helps if you have been using your wings not really for flying but at least in other activities to strengthen the muscles and get the wings used to constant movement. One more piece of advice for your body; make sure that your legs, mainly your hind legs are strong enough to give you a decent push-off when taking off, otherwise you will most likely cause damage to yourself.

The third is mind. Not only do you have to be physically prepared for flight but you have to be mentally prepared too. Flying for first timers can be extremely difficult if they haven’t learnt to shut out distractions. Being distracted on take-off is one of the most common reasons for botched flights. Flying can be a very heavy strain mentally for a pegasus, you have to keep in check where you are, where everypony else is, how high you are, how strong your flapping your wings, and also how and where to land.

If you have managed to gain, to the best of your ability, all three of these qualities, you are now suitable for flying.
Well, I've already failed part of that, looking at my thin, unused wings. Oh well, never mind I thought as I stretched my forelegs and wings. Severely shaking down my hind legs, which weren't in the best of condition but the muscle tone was helped by myself bucking the two apple trees that we have in our garden. "That will have to do" I told myself out loud, as I made my way to the small but steep hill just off the road.

After several slightly embarrassing attempts at taking off I had managed to take off and glide to the bottom of the hill. This was the first tutorial in the book, it didn’t have any diagrams of take offs due to the fact that every pegasus has a slightly different technique of taking off but in any case next was a slightly harder task, taking off and hovering. My wings and back muscles were already aching from the strain. I wanted to stop but thought that I can’t give up now, I want to fly. I need to fly.

Standing at the top of the hill I crouched slightly, wings up and prepared. "Okay, after three."
"One," I cleared all distractions from my mind.
"Two," I crouched a bit more, with tension building up in my hind legs
"Three!" I pushed down with my legs and flapped down with my wings at the same time and launched myself into the air. But I forgotten the most important step, to keep flapping and I crashed to the ground. After a couple more attempts I had managed to become confident in the hovering technique. Now came the hardest part. Actual flight.

From what I read from Flying 101 and the notes I had taken, instead of flapping downwards when airborne, the pegasus should flap diagonally when wanting to gain altitude and to flap almost completely parallel to themselves when wanting to fly at speed. I started with a simple take-off and flapped diagonally, but unfortunately having to look at my wings to get the angle right made me plummet back to the ground. Eventually after several repeats, I simply decided to just guess at the angle my wings were at. I took off again and this time flapped down but slightly behind me, I could feel the air on my hind legs as I flapped and used this as a gauge. After gaining about ten meters I started to level out and flap horizontally to gain speed. After the initial momentum kicked in I realised, "in Celestia's name! I am flying!" I feel a large grin erupt on my face as I start gaining speed and turned around and came in for a landing, the sudden rush of adrenaline had suddenly made me hungry.

After eating the apples from my saddlebag I continued to read Flying 101.

Chapter 3
Advanced Flying

By now you have become familiar with flying and what it entails. If not, get out of this section you silly pony, get back to the basics! Anyway, if you're here it's because you want to get to grips with more advanced flying techniques, these probably won’t get you into the wonder bolts but they will look very nice to newer flyers.

After reading details on moves such as the loop-the-loop, a barrel roll and a corkscrew, I felt that I could attempt at least the loop-the-loop and the barrel roll. I took off again and started to climb to give me enough room for a loop-the-loop. I levelled out and started to gain speed. Soon enough the adrenaline kicked in again and I said to myself "one, two, three!" on which I started to change the angle of my wings and I saw the horizon drop and saw the deep blue sky to the full extent and then started to arch back around seeing an upside down Ponyville zoom up and behind me completing the loop.

CRASH

I wasn't quite sure what happened but I think I collided head first into something… cyan? Either way I was falling uncontrollably and only just manage to notice the same cyan blur dive down towards me as my head fell back and I lost consciousness.

Comments

[DontBeThatGuy]

It's very distracting how some sentences start with capital letters and others don't (specifically in conversations). Also, add spaces between the paragraphs, it's just a little bit easier to read.

Other than that, very interesting concept, looking forward to where it goes. Keep 'em comin'!

[Lightning_Colt]

677901 Rectified! Sorry about that, when I'm typing fast I tend to make mistakes and Word isn't really the best at catching grammatical errors!

[Deathpony]

cant wait for the next chapter