As the Anemometer Spins

by Paracompact

Heating Up

After school that day, he met Eddy Current in their usual spot: a clear meadow outside Ponyville bordering the Everfree Forest, situated right behind the Ponyville Schoolhouse. Rumble felt his spirits lift as he inhaled and exhaled a full breath of crisp fall air. The weather was just right for flying.

As foals, he and Eddy would always pass the time here—pitting their aerial acrobatics against each other—before their parents or guardians picked them up after school. Of course, back then it was all fun and games, and they wouldn’t put their full effort into it. Nowadays, Rumble viewed it as their hallowed stomping ground, a place they’d dedicated years of flight training to. These hills had seen every bit of their progress, each new trick they mastered and added to their repertoire. By this point, they owed it to the land to give it all they had.

“Muggy air, but with a slight breeze. Cloudy sky, but not overcast. Perfect weather for training, wouldn’t you say?” Rumble gave his companion a friendly nudge.

Eddy yawned in response. “Perfect training weather is also perfect napping weather. Only wish it were a rest day for us, eh?”

“Hardly. We don’t have much time left before winter. Who knows how many more days like this we’ll have?”

“All right, then. Did you bring the wind reader?”

“Of course.” He bent down and deposited his saddlebags on the ground. He reached into the largest among them, and began reassembling a digital anemometer. This instrument, like these hills, had been with Rumble and Eddy for years.

“How’s about we at least take it a little easy today? It’s the last on-day after all, and we really went hard yesterday, too.”

“With that attitude, it won’t be long before I catch up to you!” Rumble joked. “Or are you just trying to give me a false sense of security while you do even more wing push-ups on your own?”

“Heh. I suppose nothing gets past you,” Eddy said half-heartedly.

And so their training commenced. Ground stuff first: stretches, followed by wing push-ups, followed by some quick sprints. Rumble, with some effort, could actually get the upper hoof on his friend in this category. He made sure that with each set, he did at least three more wing push-ups than Eddy, and that with each sprint, he always kept pace. Today that seemed easier (relatively speaking) than usual, as Eddy must have decided to treat this as only a half-day routine, despite Rumble’s exhortations.

“Whatever you say about my skills in the air, you gotta admit, you’ve got me beat right proper on the ground,” Eddy said, reaching for his canteen.

“Maybe,” Rumble said, sprawled out on his back. It was a hollow victory; he could feel his body was slick with sweat and he was out of breath, while Eddy looked about ready for a photo shoot.

Eddy was just so ridiculously photogenic. He sported a golden coat with a bright orange mane that exuded pure confidence, with a chiseled masculine jawline to boot. He sported all lean muscle in all the right places. On the other hand, Rumble couldn’t count on an abacus all the times he’d been mistaken for a filly half his age, thanks to his pathetic rounded stub of a muzzle and pudgy limbs. With a look of disgust, he craned his neck to peer down at his barrel; even with all his dieting, there were still pounds of himself he could do without if he wanted the most aerodynamic form.

“You ready for the air?” Eddy invited, wings outstretched, a glint of excitement in his eye.

“Yeah, just a sec.” Rumble righted himself, and took a swig from his canteen. He mentally fought back against the performance anxiety creeping up on him, the butterflies of stress ballooning in his stomach. Don’t be such a coward! he chastised himself. You live for this.

And no more than seconds after Rumble’s assent, they were off. Their latest routine had been cemented in their minds for weeks, and required no conscious deliberation. They started off low to the ground: They traced the hills’ greenery and the tops of the trees as low as they could, as quickly as they could, and practiced sustained wide-arc 90°, 180°, and 270° turns, eight reps per set.

These maneuvers demanded long, slow burns of energy, and only got harder one after the other. By the time they were on the 270’s, Rumble’s body trembled with effort, and he had to remind himself more than once to breathe.

It’s almost over, thank Celestia it’s almost over, he told himself. One more 270, and that finishes the set.

They flew into the last clearing, where they would perform their final arc. But then another voice entered his head: I can’t do it, I can’t do it, my lungs are on fire! He shook himself out of it. You absolute wimp, you did it just fine yesterday!

But his self-directed browbeating was not enough. Eddy was gaining meters on him at an impossible pace. Fine, if you’re really so weak and useless, then just take the inner loop. From somewhere uncertain inside him: Thank you…

So with shame in his heart, he turned early into the arc, and held on for dear life as he flew around three-quarters of a circle of considerably smaller radius than that of Eddy’s. Nonetheless, they still came out of their arcs at the same time and place. Finally ready to rest, Rumble allowed his wings to slow down and approach for landing…

But Eddy just kept going, and going, and going, past the point they for a fact always stopped. What had gotten into him? Not one to be outdone, Rumble forced himself to follow. Then, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he saw what Eddy was aiming for: another entire arc. Rumble didn’t have time to brace himself, but attempted to pull himself through it anyway.

Twenty… forty… sixty… eighty… Rumble’s wings buckled helplessly beside him at just over the point of the quarter-turn. He threw his hooves in front of his face as he made an unexpected crash landing into the broad side of a hill. Waves of pain immediately washed over him, equally from the landing as simply from his overworked muscles.

Eddy noticed his grounded friend and lightly flew over to his aid, but (Rumble carefully observed) not before finishing an immaculate 450° turn. “You all right? I didn’t notice you were still following me.”

Rumble tenderly brought himself back onto his hooves, cautious of any serious injury. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be any. “What happened to eight reps per set?” Rumble asked, slightly irritable.

“Sorry, I… lost count of which one we were on,” Eddy said. Perhaps realizing how unconvincingly he had said it, he added sheepishly: “Besides, I guess I just felt like doing another one.”

What a show-off. “Yeah well, please let me know next time you plan on doing that. Not all of us can just increase our reps on a whim, you know.” Rumble tried to make his complaint sound playful, but failed to dissimulate his true feelings.

Eddy summarily apologized once more, and Rumble—despite the tendonitis in his wings, despite the impingements in his shoulders, and most of all despite his bruised pride—forced himself through the rest of their training.

~~

“I’m afraid the worst of it all started,” Thunderlane related, “right when he got his cutie mark. He was always pushing himself, back when he was a blank flank, but I thought he matured past that at the Crusaders’ day camp. Gettin’ his cutie mark in flying just brought all the same problems right back again.”

Twilight nodded and dutifully recorded it in her notebook with a levitating quill. Rainbow—who was hanging upside down in Thunderlane’s loveseat, still trying to find the most comfortable lounging position—chimed in: “Cutie mark in what again?”

“Flying,” he said wistfully.

“And the issue is he’s not getting anywhere in his training?” Rainbow Dash countered. “This sounds pretty cut-and-dry: You just gotta push him harder! Don’t need two Wonderbolts in the same room to figure that out.”

“It sounds like quite the opposite, actually, Rainbow.”

“Yeah, it is,” Thunderlane said. “You see, I’ve come to realize that ponies like me and Dash are, more than anything, lucky. Lucky to be able to make it in the big leagues as Wonderbolts, to achieve our dreams to the fullest.”

“Lucky? Nonsense. Are you saying we could’ve gotten to where we are now without constant blood, sweat, and tears?”

“I believe what he’s saying,” Twilight explained, “is that training hard is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to becoming a Wonderbolt.”

“In other words, I’m afraid that some ponies like my little bro just have a limit to how good of flyers they can become. If they try to push past that, they just... destroy their own bodies and self-esteem. They get to a point where the harder they train, the worse they get.”

Rainbow clearly took umbrage at this, but Twilight tactfully preempted her: “The map sent us here to resolve a friendship problem. Any idea what that might be?”

Thunderlane closed his eyes and sighed. “That just might be Eddy Current: Spitfire’s nephew, Ponyville High’s star flyer, and my bro’s best foalhood friend.”