Of Fire And Lightning

by Compass The Pegasus

Chapter 3

“This is all your fault. I’m going to be washed out and it’s all your fault,” Soarin choked out as he rolled over in the mud to turn and face his partner. He glowered at the yellow mare in front of him, who stared back with equal resentment. “If it weren’t for you and that damn tunnel, we might’ve passed. We’ve been here for like two days, and soon enough we’ll be packing our bags to go home, so thanks a lot.”

“Celestia! How dense can you be?” Spitfire screamed as she bashed the growing puddle beneath her. “Yes, I got stuck. I’m sorry that I’m a pegasus! Sorry that I hate tight spaces, but you must be one stupid bastard if you really thing that I slowed us down that much.”

“I-” Soarin started, but he stopped himself as his thoughts caught up to him. She could provoke him, they could be at this for hours, but he was just tired of it. So he shook his head. “Whatever. I’m going back to my bunk,” Soarin grunted, ending any chance at furthering the conversation. To his surprise, Spitfire was fine with this, and silently followed him back to the barracks.

Their duties were completed for the day after a few more rounds of physical training. They had nothing else to do other than retire to their barracks, or head to the mess hall; both chose the former. As Soarin lay in his bed silently, he noticed a familiar laugh. His eyes scanned the room and he saw that Leaf was not at his own bunk, but rather was sitting on Cirrus’ bunk next to her, chatting away.

Though he couldn’t make out what they were talking about, he was able to tell that Leaf spoke with an enthusiasm that he hadn’t spoken to Soarin with. He just had this goofy smile plastered onto his face the entire time. At some point Cirrus put her hoof on Leaf’s shoulder - they both blushed and looked away from each other. Soarin, watching on, felt his stomach churn.

Why am I having such an awful experience while everypony else seems to be doing okay? He thought, as he lay his head onto his hooves, no longer able to watch. Even Leaf seems to be doing something right. His jealousy started to build up deep down. As he lay there, trapped within his own thoughts, he swore he could hear sniffling coming from the bunk beneath him.

“Cadet Soarin! Cadet Spitfire!” the voice cut through the din of the barracks. Standing in the doorway was a tan mare with a darker brown mane tied tightly into a bun. She was dressed in a neat service uniform, and had a clipboard tucked underneath her left wing. She continued, “Report to Staff Sergeant Swift Bullet’s office ASAP. I’m Corporal Windy Wisp, I’m here to collect you.”

Soarin’s stomach dropped. He leaned over the edge of his bed to see Spitfire looking back up to him, her brows knitted in confusion, but as she looked at Soarin, her face went instantly pale. He knew it, she knew it: this was the end. They were getting expelled.

Slowly, the two pegasi headed towards Windy Wisp, who then sharply turned and headed out the door. Once they exited the barracks, they noticed the rain and wind waning, and the storm receding, as teams of pegasi worked to clear out the sky. The sun shone brightly down upon them as they both looked at each other with the same somber expression, and after sharing a deep breath, they followed the ferrymare, and crossed the river to the great beyond.

---

Soarin and Spitfire stood at the door to Bullet’s office, no longer soaked to the bone, but still damp enough to leave lingering smells of petrichor. Windy Wisp had led them to the mare’s office and then vanished before they had a chance to thank her. Spitfire’s dancelike gait was all but gone, replaced by a greatly stiffer posture, while Soarin’s entire body shook with anxiety. Spitfire raised a hoof and knocked on the door curtly before taking two steps back.

“Come in.”

The two cadets entered the office to see Bullet at her desk, writing away on a notepad with a pen clutched in her teeth. Once she saw who stood in front of her, she spit the pen out onto her desk, and leaned back in her chair.

“Finally. Took you long enough. Oh, sorry. My fault. I should’ve expected that from the two slowest recruits.” She smirked as she took a sip from a mug on her desk, then cringed and set it back down, and the expression fell from her face. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Um, well, we came in here to talk about our performance today, Drill Sergeant,” Spitfire answered.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. And call me ma’am. I’m not your drill instructor right now.”

“... Yes ma’am.” Spitfire replied, cautiously.

“It’s no secret that your performance could be considered ‘bottom of the barrel,’ so to speak. Would you agree?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they both responded glumly.

“It was bad from every point of view, and you two have failed at the very thing that this course is meant to teach.”

Bullet stood and walked over to a chalkboard on her wall and promptly erased the various schedules she had written. She then gripped a wooden stick with a piece of chalk on the end with her teeth and drew an L-shaped graph.

“Do you know how a Wonderbolt is chosen among hundreds of phenomenal candidates?”

“Acrobatics?”

“Time attack?”

“Wrong, and wrong. The way Wonderbolts are chosen almost has nothing to do with skill,” Bullet said through her teeth as she wrote ‘Performance’ on the Y axis, and ‘Trust’ on the X axis. “What do you think we look for in a Wonderbolt? Where would they be on this chart? Spitfire?”

“Uh… High performance?”

“Impressive, you gave me half an answer. Everypony wants a high performing, high trust candidate, too bad they’re near impossible to find. Nopony wants low performing, low trust candidates. That’s clear. But what about the other combination, high performance, low trust? Soarin, would you like having a wingpony like that?”

“I- I don’t know. I guess not,” he replied.

“The answer is ‘No.’ You may trust that pony with doing their job or even your life, but would you trust them with your bank account? Would you trust them with your special somepony? No, you wouldn’t. This pony would be a toxic leader and a toxic team member. What about low performing, but highly trustworthy? Spitfire?”

“Uhhh…” she hesitated, flickering her eyes between Bullet and the chalkboard. Bullet’s gaze bore into Spitfire as she waited for an answer. “No? Because they wouldn’t be able to keep up?”

“Maybe so, but that’s a pony that I would rather have on my team, or as my wingpony than any high performance, low trust individual. Becoming a Wonderbolt is not about how well you are able to perform individually, it’s how much you can lift up and support your teammates. Individual performance is important too, but in the end, I’d rather have a trustworthy wingpony than the best flier. As of right now, you two are low performance, low trust; you are not Wonderbolt material; and if you don’t change, you never will be.”

“Permission to speak, ma’am?” Soarin asked. Spitfire stared at him, but said nothing.

“Granted.”

“Are we going to be expelled?”

“I want to,” she replied curtly, subtly clenching her jaw. “I really do, and I’ve been advised that I should, but I have a gut feeling that I can’t shake.” Bullet said squinting at Soarin, Spitfire and then back again. “I think I’ll take this time to talk with you one on one. Spitfire, leave the room. Go out, to the left and beyond the glass door. Wait there on the couch until I send Soarin to come get you.”

The two cadets exchanged a confused glance before Spitfire turned and walked out the door. Soarin watched her shut it behind her before turning his attention back towards Bullet.

“Spitfire slowed us d-”

“Did I give you permission to speak, cadet?” Bullet raised her voice, silencing Soarin. “That’s what I thought. Did you get anything I just said through your thick skull? Do you need me to spell it out for you? Again?”

“Uh- I… I…”

“Disappointing. You are disappointing,” she replied, shaking her head. “Your partner was not the reason you two performed so poorly on the course. You were. She held a quicker pace through the course, and you dragged behind, holding her back.”

Soarin’s eyes shot wide open as he stared at her. He was about to open his mouth to say something, but a glare from Bullet kept him quiet. She picked up a notepad off of her desk and flipped it open.

“Let’s see… Slow at the tires. Slow at the first wall.. You did manage to beat pace at the quarter-mile by about four seconds, but things really started to go south in the mud pit. Some argument about a-” She glanced up at him. “New technique?”

Soarin’s shoulders sagged and his nose nearly touched the floor. His body felt as thought it was shrinking into itself.

“Whatever that was all about, it kept you two bickering for the rest of the course, which especially hurt your time on the second wall. Your stubbornness was clearly holding you back throughout the concrete jungle, and didn’t help you too much in the tunnel, either.”

Soarin’s eyes lit up at the mention of the tunnel, but Bullet held a hoof up to keep him quiet. “I know you’re excited to whine about the tunnel, but let’s just take a step back. You two spent seven minutes in that tunnel, and twenty-nine on the whole course.”

She shut her notepad and tossed it back on her desk.

“If you’re as slow as I remember, you’re not capable of doing math, so let me fill you in. You think your partner was the reason you did so poorly? What’s twenty-nine minus seven? It’s twenty-two. What’s the average completion time for the entire course? It’s fourteen. Even if we discount the tunnel completely, you’ve still got the worst time in my unit.”

Bullet looked back at Soarin and sighed before leaning forward in her chair. “Look. All that I said about trustworthiness? I was specifically talking about you. You’re supposed to cooperate with your partner, but instead you act like you’re competing with her, and it’s slowing you both down. If she can’t trust you on the ground, in a controlled environment, how could she possibly trust you in the air, where one wrong move or miscommunication could get somepony killed?”

Soarin couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Ma’am, respectfully…” He paused, and considered what he’d say as Bullet raised an eyebrow, but he couldn’t think of anything compelling. “Spitfire’s- I mean, I can’t work with her. She’s impossible. She’s-”

“No, Soarin,” Bullet interrupted him. “Whatever you might respectfully say about your partner, this is on you. What she did wrong is not your concern. And right now, when I think about whether or not to expel the both of you, you’re the deciding factor. And it’s close.”

Soarin’s head was still low to the ground, no longer able to look at Bullet. Noticing this, she sighed.

“That’s enough. Get out, and send Spitfire in on your way.”

“Yes ma’am,” he lamented as he saluted her half-heartedly, and exited the room. His hooves scraped the dark wooden floors of the office as he walked down the hallway past the glass door. He continued walking until the hallway opened up into the waiting room where Spitfire sat stiffly on a degrading, old cloth couch. From a distance, he could tell that her entire body was shaking, but as he got closer, he found it impossible to look up at her. He tried to shift his eyes upward, but he just couldn’t. He stood within hoof’s reach of her, but neither pony said a word. The silence lingered for a second before he heard her speak up.

“I… I guess it’s my t-turn then,” she sputtered, her voice clearly uneasy. He listened to her hoofsteps as she went around him and made her way back to Bullet’s office. The sound echoed into the distance. His eyes remained on the wooden floor beneath him. He felt imprisoned by a growing wall of guilt encircling him. His heart hammered in his chest as he suddenly felt an urge to run, forever, far from here, and never stop. So he ran.

He ran out of the building and past the barracks. He found himself running along the trail for the three mile run, but as soon as he processed this, he jerked a sharp breath and turned off the trail and directly into the heart of the forest. His peripheral vision blackened and soon he could see nearly nothing but what was immediately in front of him.

He ran for what felt like an eternity. His already exhausted muscles screamed in agony. His heart pumped what felt like acid through his veins. Eventually the trees thinned, and Soarin noticed he was approaching a cliff. He slowed his sprint into a jog and then a walk. He approached the edge and looked over the grand landscape. In the far distance, he could see the small speck that was Canterlot hanging off the side of a tall mountain.

He couldn’t hold in what he was feeling for a second longer, so he screamed. He screamed off the edge until his voice was completely hoarse, and kept screaming until he couldn’t make another sound. He collapsed onto the ground when his exhaustion caught up to him once more, and he lay in the dirt, alone, sobbing silently to himself.

---

Three days had passed since Soarin and Spitfire were called into Bullet’s office. Over those three days they had not exchanged a single word, despite being next to each other the entire time. Soarin wasn’t even able to speak to Leaf, but he hadn’t seen him much anyway since his pairing with Cirrus.

Spitfire was the first to break the silence between them by making small talk on the fourth day, and when she didn’t receive a reply she would just continue talking as if she had. Soarin wanted to say something back so badly, but he still found it impossible to even look at her. When he would try to speak to her, his throat would burn and his chest would contract with his festering anxieties.

On the fifth day, time had come again for them to run the course, however their time had only improved by a couple minutes. Soarin still trailed behind Spitfire in the obstacle course, and Spitfire had to be pushed through the tunnel yet again. Soarin looked at Bullet in hopes of some positive feedback, but she silently shook her head at him and walked away. Spitfire did not notice, and instead seemed content with the improved time.

They walked back to the barracks together, Spitfire humming a tune to herself while walking in her odd, dancy style. Soarin, however, stared at the ground in front of himself as he walked. His head hung low and his wings dropped lazily, dragging on the ground beside him.

“Why are you being so quiet?” Spitfire snapped, finally getting sick of his demeanor over the past few days. “Aren’t you happy that we did better this time?”

“I- No. It wasn’t good enough,” Soarin mumbled, raising his head in another failed attempt to look at her.

“What? We were more than two minutes faster than last time.”

“It’s not enough,” he sighed.

“I mean, I guess it’s not, but it is better. You can’t deny that,” she replied.

Soarin just let gravity pull his head back toward the ground.

“Why are you acting like this?” she growled, getting in front of him and stopping in her tracks. “I thought you pissed me off when you acted normally, but no, this is worse. I’m sick of it.” She stomped the ground with a hoof to make her point.

Soarin stopped briefly, only to decide to step around her and continue walking forward.

“Hey! I’m talkin’ to you. I asked you a question. Don’t walk away from me!” she yelled after Soarin.

He stopped, his shoulders raised and his ears down, but he didn’t face her.

“I… ” was all he could say before he could feel his gut twist and turn enough for him to double over. He clenched his teeth as his anxiety crushed him.

Spitfire came to his side with a frown.

“Look at me.”

“I…”

“Look. At. Me.”

“I can’t. I can’t do it.”

“Soarin,” Spitfire said, “I’m not asking.”

Soarin felt his heart race. He could feel his blood pumping in his ears, and his airways felt closed off. He realized that he couldn’t get out of this. No matter how he tried, she wouldn’t let him. Slowly, he turned toward Spitfire. He stared at the dirt and grass beneath her hooves before shutting his eyes tight. The pains in his chest were sharper now. With a deep breath, he raised his head and opened his eyes to see Spitfire in front of him. It was the first time he’d been able to look at her in days.

“There you go. That wasn’t hard, was it?” she asked him. He stared into her eyes and fought back some tears that began to well up. She smiled at him, but didn’t say anything more. After a few seconds of holding eye contact, Soarin had to look away.

Spitfire sighed and her smile fell. “Look. I know why you’re angry at me.”

This caught Soarin by surprise. “Angry at you?” he asked, bewildered.

“I’m going to get us both kicked out because I keep getting stuck in the course. That’s what Bullet told me. I know that’s why you’re angry at me.”

“I’m not angry at you…”

“Then why haven’t you been talking to me? Or looking at me? You must be upset at me.”

“I’m not angry at you, Spitfire!” Soarin sighed, turning away from her. “I-I’m ashamed, of myself. You're not the reason we’ll be kicked out. I am. I’m sorry.”

“W-what?”

“Bullet told me that I’m the reason we’re failing so hard. You getting stuck is nothing compared to how much I’m slowing you down in the rest of the course. I’m sorry for failing you. I’m sorry that I’m the reason that you’re getting held b-back.” He nearly choked on his words as the lump in his throat seemed to grow.

“Soarin…”

“You didn’t deserve it, and I was punishing you for my own failure. I’m sorry, Spitfire.”

“It’s not-”

“I know I’m failing you, but I’m doing whatever I can to get better. It’s not right for me to drag somepony down with my own problems. For your sake, I’m going to do everything I can to make things right.” There was a pause after he finished. Spitfire’s eyes softened and she unclenched her jaw.

“Well…. I’m sorry too. I’m sorry for getting stuck in the tunnel. I’m not sure what it is that makes me freeze in there, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m sorry for provoking you, I was just trying to be friendly, but I guess it backfired.”

Soarin looked back up, meeting Spitfire’s eyes. Her face was slightly damp from silently shedded tears. Her golden irises seemed to glitter at him as she smiled. With another deep burning sensation inside his chest, he couldn’t help but smile back. The stress appeared to leave his body, and his stiff demeanor crumbled away.

The metaphorical wall that the two cadets had built between each other over the past week crumbled and burned down as they looked at each other in a blissful silence. The Wonderbolt academy wasn’t a place for hotshots to show off what they know. It was to learn teamwork. Trust. As Soarin looked at his partner, he noticed that her shoulders seemed more relaxed than before. He had thought she was already relaxed, but it was clear as day now that she was just as stressed as he was, even if she didn’t show it. He took catharsis in watching her stress melt away even by a little bit.

Soarin finally broke the silence. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to get kicked out of the Academy.”

Spitfire smiled back. “Me neither.”

“From now on, we work together as a team. I help you and you help me. You and me, actual partners from now on. Whatdya say?” Soarin reached out a hoof to her. She looked down at it and then back up to him and chuckled.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Spitfire laughed. She reached out and bumped his hoof with his own. “Done deal.”

---

“Huh, you two got along a lot quicker than I thought.” Misty Fly said, popping a peanut into her mouth. “Honestly, If any stallion acted like such a dick to me, I’d probably knock his block off right then and there.”

Soarin cringed at the thought. “Yeah, well there’s no denying that I was in the wrong, but she did provoke me.”

“Don’t shift the blame!”

“Alright, fine, fine,” he admitted. “You win. Anyway, That was the start of a long and painful process of, well… learning to work with each other. I don’t know about Spitfire, but I slept like a rock that night. Nearly missed morning PT, which would’ve been a disaster all by itself, but starting the next day, we made it our mission to beat Bullet’s time. Not by fifteen seconds, but by thirty, and time was our enemy. We only had about seven weeks to pull ourselves together. And we had no idea how rough it was about to be.”

Author's Note:

What will Soarin and Spitfire do to save their sorry butts? Find out next time!

WOO It took a while, but it's finally here. This was a painful one and had to go through multiple rewrites, COVID, moving, and family emergencies, but I hope you enjoy nonetheless!

*Note: I've re-written chapter 2 as well, so if you're a returning reader, go back and check it out.*

Leave a like/comment if you enjoyed. Thanks!

Comments

[PseudoBob Delightus]

Good to see this continue. Also good to see Spitfire and Soarin maybe not being so terrible after all? Only time will tell, but I imagine they've still got plenty of idiot left in them.

Anyway, completing these chapters was a little rough, but as the saying goes - no pain, no gain.

[lillytheomegawolf]

As it’s been while, I reread the story.
Chapter two is feeling good.
Chapter 3 felt short but has been a real fun read.
It’s nice to see that things are turning around.
I did get a laugh out of their friends getting real friendly…