ECRL: The Wonderhawks

by WildFire15

So, what have we Learned?

Lightning Dust and Spanner sat in the small room Fleetfoot had earmarked for her, what may as well be patented, debriefings of terror. What was an overly large broom cupboard seemed almost deliberately set up to scare those inside, though Dust was less concerned about criticism and more bothered by the continued savage stinging in her nose. The medic who healed her had told her after the race that it was possible for it to start randomly bleeding over the next couple days, which wasn’t making her feel any better.

Fleet read over her notes carefully, as if she was evaluating Dust for promotion. It was odd she had so many notes as Dust had only rarely seen her actually write anything.

“So, Dust.” Fleet said simply, regarding on her racer as she laid her clipboard down. “How do you feel your weekend went?”

Dust wasn’t sure if Fleet wanted an essay as an answer, but for Dust there was only one way she felt she could describe it.

“It was a disaster.” She growled, her anger still not fully gone. Spanner looked at her, somewhat surprised by her response.

“That’s rather extreme, Dust.” Fleet replied. “Considering you only just qualified for the first race, I would say you’ve improved considerably. I take it you didn’t watch or read any of the coverage post qualifying?”

“No.”

“Well, the pundits were all amazed by your performance.”

“Why would they be? I didn’t come first.”

“There's more then just first place, Dust.” Spanner felt like pointing out.

“I'm here to win, I don't care about los-” She continued before Spanner cut in.

“There’s no pony who can walk into any race anywhere with no experience and win on the first attempt. It takes patience, hard work and a good observation. One of those seems to be your main weaknesses.”

“Do tell.” Dust growled, not amused.

“You went for thirty laps at full qualifying speed and tired yourself out. You need to hold something in reserve for overtaking and defending which you did eventually do.”

“And you didn’t notice Typhoon.” Fleet added.

“That was a racing accident.” Spanner answered back. “Perhaps I could have warned of a potential move but I don’t think it would have made much difference as no one saw that coming.”

“Speaking of which, I’d rather you didn’t keep distracted me when I’m racing.” Dust continued. “And I have been watching what they’re doing as well.”

“To the point of where you barely get any sleep, I can’t help but notice.”

“It’s called dedication.”

“Everyone on this grid is dedicated, but you can’t summon up energy from nowhere.”

“Shut up, the pair of you.” Fleet cut in, banging the table to make sure she got their attention. “I was going to say that I’m impressed with how you’ve improved your speed potential as, as I said, you only narrowly qualified at Cloudsdale. However, Spanner is right; your complete lack of patience is your weakness.

“Trying to get back on topic for a moment; your practice was fine and you improved quite a bit, though it was your qualifying lap that was really impressive. You’ve obviously learnt as you could then repeat it several times in the race but that would have been better saved for either a late race charge or for overtaking.

“Now, it’s easy for us to sit and criticise from our comfortable chairs while you race, but Spanner is doing his best to get the right information to you as he can see more of what’s going on around you then you can. I think we need to work on how you operate during a race because you need to not only maintain your energy levels while at speed, but also absorb more information as you go.

“Another thing I want you to do is tone down on your 'additional training'. We keep finding you passed out after long nights weight lifting or whatever you do and you’ll never improve if you don’t allow your body some time to recover. So I’m going to impose a nine pm curfew on you and your nose is bleeding, by the way.”

Dust was confused for a moment, the argument she was about to start vanishing as she felt the familiar trickle of something warm slowly making its way down her face. She carefully wiped it away and found it at least wasn’t much.

“Go and get yourself cleaned up and send Concorde in.” Fleet added.

***

The Cloudsdale Airship Port had been jammed packed after the first race with racers, their teams and fans. Baltimare’s train station in comparison was relatively empty, or at least of racers and teams.

Quite a few had accepted Riggwelter’s invitations to his brewery to celebrate its one hundredth anniversary, but Lightning Dust had declined.

To her, it was an opportunity to get the drop on everyone else; a full day of training and learning about the high speed Vanhoover Challenge, which featured one of the longest non-loop corners of the season and was renounced for stressing wings out if it wasn’t respected. There was also two extremely long straights, separated by a forty degree corner that could be taken at full speed and allow the racers to hit super sonic speeds, while the rest of the track was a collection of fairly quick, winding corners that went up and over small hills.

Once all her stuff was on the train, Dust started searching through all the books she could find for anything on Vanhoover, leaving Spanner to load the rest of the suit cases on his own.

Rarity and Coco, who were going back to Ponyville to start working in earnest on the dresses and suits for the Maneaco Fashion Show. They sat at the table, looking upon the damage done to Dust’s racing suit in her accident with Typhoon and the former looking as if she might burst into tears at the sight of her destroyed creation. The material had held up and even remained aerodynamic despite the considerable scrapes from sliding along tarmac, but all the colour had been taken away to reveal the beige like colour underneath.

“I’m not very familiar with racing rules, but can Lightning Dust still use this?” Coco asked Spanner as he re-entered with the last two suitcases.

“It can’t be re-used.” He confirmed as he put the suitcases in the luggage rack.

“She needs a whole new suit?” Rarity exclaimed. “Do you know how long it took me to make this?”

“I know full well how long it takes to make them; it’s your own fault you wanted to do a complicated design with jewel encrusted numbers.”

“I want them to look good on track.”

“And you did, but you may want to consider something simpler and easier to replicate. It's the same deal with the helmet; if it's involved in a crash it can't be used again.”

Rarity folded her forelegs and glared at the suit, not really wanting to leave the argument there but also unsure how to progress it.

“I can start making a new race suit if you want to focus on your Maneaco show designs, Rarity?” Coco offered.

“Okay.” Rarity sighed in response. As Coco took the suit over to another table, Rarity magically brought her bag down, pulled out a sheet of paper, a pencil and her glasses and immediately started scribbling down notes and ideas.

Meanwhile, Dust had pulled a pair of dumbbells out of her bag and started working, Concorde’s signed season annual propped open on the page about the previous year's race in Vanhoover.

“Dust, you’ve just come off a race track.” Spanner said. “You need to rest a bit before you do that.”

“Fleet said I can do all the training I want until nine pm and it’s only five.” Dust countered.

“Oh fine.” Spanner sighed in frustration as he poured some water from a bottle into a glass. “You may as well have a drink first.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a potion I got from the zebra in Ponyville. She said it helps recuperation after exercise.”

Dust considered that for a moment, looking at the offered glass that looked like it simply contained water. Can’t hurt, she thought, so she took the glass and emptied it in one go, instantly falling over backwards, fast asleep.

“Right,” Spanner mused, smirking as he removed the glass, book and dumbbells and rearranged Dust so she was on her side. “Either I’m a more convincing liar then ponies say I am or she’s just very gullible.”

“The latter.” Rarity commented before going back to her designs as the train started to move.