Always In Style

by Homeshine

Raw Talent

"DANGIT, Surprise! I keep looking!" Soarin called out to the pony immediately in front of him. "You're going to give me a rudder at this rate!"

"That's the ideaaaa," she sing-songed. "Can you resist the temptation of looking when I shake my plot? Come on, get some blood into those wings. It'll help you fly faster."

It really did help, Rainbow mused; otherwise, Spitfire never would have put up with Surprise's continuous teasing of Soarin. Of course, all Soarin had to do was stare straight ahead as he was supposed to, instead of constantly sneaking a peek, but he kept losing that battle with himself, or rather, Surprise was 'winning' it somehow.

Rainbow was flying the head of the V, being the one most comfortable with flying naked. Spitfire and Soarin were in the back, so none of the other Wonderbolts could directly see their genders; that was the compromise they'd agreed on. The left side of the formation was Spitfire-Thunderlane-Rainbow, in what Rainbow assumed was Spitfire asserting some privilege in getting to see Thunderlane, especially after Thunderlane got a good look at Rainbow Dash. From what Rainbow could tell from occasional quick glances, his face, ears, and wings were more orange than Spitfire's old fur, so she could only imagine what the rest of him looked like. The right side had Fleetfoot behind Dash, who was the most well-behaved so far. She was followed by the constantly-nattering-to-each-other Surprise and Soarin.

"Well then, don't look, silly. I caught you looking when we were still ON THE GROUND almost all the time! You can't wait until we land again?"

Soarin averted his eyes for the umpteenth time, "DANGIT! NO! Apparently I can't!"

"Well, you'll simply have to have stiff wings then!"

"Or other things," Soarin groused. "You're enjoying this way to much."

"Yes I am!"

Rainbow heard Spitfire suppress a giggle. Then, after that, after another call of "DANGIT!", it evolved into a full belly laugh. "Come on, children, play nice. Some of us are a bit shy about having our level of arousal on display."

"I'm not!"

"But Soarin is. Go easy on him, K?"

"OK, tell you what, Soar, if you can avoid looking at my rump the whole way until we get there, I'll give you a picture; you can hang it in your locker to look at whenever you want. How about that?"

Soarin paused for several seconds, "Now I keep thinking about that."

"That's the way!"

Rainbow could hear the sound of Spitfire's facehoof from the front.

* * *

Rainbow and the others were making an attempt to land near Ember, not quite fully pulling off "landing", but definitely pulling off, 'Collapsing to the ground in front of her', not having enough vertical lift for a 'proper' landing.

Ember looked down questioningly, and said to Rainbow, "Aren't you usually blue? I liked blue. Looks like you flew too fast for your own good. Does that happen often to you fur-instead-of-scales ponies?"

"It's a long story", Rainbow replied as she struggled to disentangle herself from her teammates. "We plucked ourselves a bit to enhance our flying ability."

"I am partial to blue. But I'm even more partial to flying ability."

Spitfire managed to de-tumple herself first, and stood at attention on all fours, "Reporting for duty, ma'am; we came literally as fast as we could, as you can see by our current state. What's our mission objective?"

"Well, the dragons need help from the ponies, it's a bit embarrassing."

With the word 'embarrassing' Spitfire's wings started to trail up, and started to regain some of their orange-ish hue, as she remembered she was standing in full view of everyone. 'Oh, you have no idea', she whispered under her breath.

Ember continued, "We were trying to come up with a way to pull more lava from the caldera for the eggs, so we opened the lava mine deeper, but we got Deep Lava, that was too hot."

"Lava can be too hot?" Rainbow asked.

Ember nodded. "The lava we normally get is very warm, but tolerable, even pleasant. This core lava … well, let's just say it's hot enough to melt dragonscale."

"Wow" Rainbow deadpanned, "That's hot."

"That's what she said," Surprise chimed in.

"DANGIT!"

"Relax, we're already on the ground."

"What's going on?" Ember asked, "I'm confused."

"Don't worry about it. It's fine," Spitfire replied to her. "So what can we give you?"

"We need a way to cool it off faster, but no one can get near enough to it. We thought we could get someone with feathery wings, who's really good at flying, to fan it from afar. If we can get some circulation going ..."

Spitfire grinned broadly, "Well, that's us, ma'am. We can take it from here!" and gave a hearty salute, before executing a perfect 180-turn-

- right in front of Soarin. A familiar "Pomf" was heard.

Spitfire's grin went away immediately as she gave Soarin a sidelong gaze. "If I catch you looking at me where you shouldn't again, I will not be happy! Do I make myself clear?"

Soarin's mouth was scrunched up, and his eyes were staring VERY straight ahead, at absolute perfect attention, as was the rest of him, including his wings, and... other things. "Sorry, ma'am. Didn't expect that turn, ma'am. Couldn't help it, ma'am."

Spitfire just continued walking, "Hm. See that it doesn't happen again," but gave a small, sly grin, "or ... next time, you will keep standing at attention like that until your wings go back down."

* * *

Surprise narrated for Ember, explaining what the others were finishing up. Surprise was chosen for this task because she reported having the least amount of modesty. On a scale of 1 to 10, her reported score was 'a negative number'.

"See, Ember? It's similar to a pegusus- caused tornado, except: One (1), with lava instead of rainwater, and ( B), it doesn't go everywhere. Because lava going everywhere is bad."

Ember put one hand to her mouth in thought, "A good technique. Requires some nice formation flying to get everything that precise. Do they practice that way of trying to corkscrew around?"

POMF! Surprise looked bug-eyed to where Ember was pointing with her other hand at Rainbow and Spitfire flying some sort of Areal Knot around each other, each continuously teasing the other. Flying right. Flying left. Somersaulting over. Somersaulting under. Coming up on the left. Coming up on the right. All faster than the eye could resolve as a single image. Fly boomberang-ing.

The tornado had had evolved into a fun game of each trying to look at the other one, while trying to avoid being looked at, flying faster than any areal dogfight, acting on instinct, adding more and more power to the tornado, than the rest of the Wonderbolts combined.

It was a thing of beauty

also for other reasons.

"... You must have been overheated by your flying around lava. You're turning red."

"Yeah," Surprise gave a sheepish grin, "Probably? I'm gonna... go... now." Surprise took off positively vertically, while she could still move her wings at all.

Her boss looked absolutely sexy flying that way.

Therefore, it absolutely HAD to go in the show. Surprise had been a performer long enough to know how to show off for an audience. This was it. She had to tell her how good she looked.

* * *

* * *

Spitfire was wearing nothing but a whistle around her neck for the show. She was constantly running her front hooves together in nervousness at this fact.

The show itself looked amazing; they'd practiced it enough times, even the "extra moves" they'd added from the Dragonlands; there was no mere stage fright here, she'd outgrown that long ago. She was confident in her abilities.

The Summer Cool-Off Show "uniform" was the perfect thing to beat the summer heat. And it was certainly in theme. And it certainly had easier upkeep than the last show's uniform. From a practical standpoint, it was the best choice.

And they looked apple-bucking fantastic.

She couldn't shake the feeling, though, even though she knew she had nothing to be nervous about. Now her back legs were crossing too, now. She took a deep breath. That tears it. She was a WONDERBOLT!

She strode confidently onto the field, showing her proper military bearing.

"And the Captain of the Summer Cool-Off Show: Spitfire!" said the announcer from an unseen speaker. Spitfire joined the other nude Wonderbolts on the dais in the center of the field, and looked around at the cheering crowd. Well, they were certainly more polite than they were for Rainbow's first time; but then, they were expecting their nudity this time, with the advertising for the show and and all. She saw several of the spectators going nude as well, and this wasn't only the normal sports body-paint attitude; she'd seen quite a few ponies around Cloudsdale going about their everyday business nude days before the show. Apparently, they'd started something

The announcer continued, "They will be signing autographs after the show in their new uniforms." After all, Wonderbolts uniforms were already popular. Why wouldn't they be? Their nudity didn't even ... stand out. Not here, not even in 'real life', anymore. It even stood out less than the old Wonderbolts uniforms. She'd better get used to the lack of attention before winter made them put them back on for their shows. She would have to appear in public being mobbed all the time again as soon as anyone recognized the uniform.

Also, they could perform much earlier in the summer season this way, in temperatures that would make them overheat if they still had their uniform clothes on. She could feel the breeze on her skin and the wind tussle her wingfeathers. She was getting used to this.

A shower of air. A rustle of hair. It was actually ... pleasant.

Her nakedness now forgotten, Spitfire blew the whistle, and started the show.

Comments

[Crocoshark]

10028037
Have you seen the size of their tails and some of their manes? Wonderbolts are like peacocks.