ECRL: The Wonderhawks

by WildFire15

Late Night Research

There couldn’t be a more perfect day for an aerial display. There was barely a cloud in the sky as the crowd cheered, the sheer number of them making an almost biblical noise. So vast was the crowd, the one they’d come to see couldn’t see the ground they were standing on.

They had only come to see one, the greatest Wonderbolt of them all; Lightning Dust herself. She wore the uniform she had always been destined to wear; the blue and yellow of the Wonderbolts, slivers of yellow gems outlining the lightning bolt that ran down her sides. It felt so natural, almost like her own skin let alone a second one.

The crowd roared as she dived, looped and rolled at speeds no other Pegasus could. Everyone was left in awe as she moved perfectly through the sky, as if it was obeying her every whim. Everything was perfect for her and what better way to end a display then blowing the audience away with her signature move, a move she’d practiced for years and blew away everything from the Sonic Syncro-Pair to the Sonic Rainboom; The Lightning Corkscrew.

Dust accelerated as fast as she could, soon approaching the speed of sound where she threw herself into a high speed roll as she broke the sound barrier. Her lightning trail spun away from her as she rolled across the sky to the delight of the crowd below, but they were still begging for more.

As a few ideas zipped through her mind, she noticed a cloud ahead that would be suitable for a few manoeuvres and headed towards it. As she flew under the cloud and turned to climb rapidly, initially thinking of doing a high speed loop around the cloud, she noticed something.

More clouds had appeared, as if from nowhere, but it was their shape that was the most peculiar thing of all. Dust focused as she continued to climb, trying to make out exactly what the shape was and, as she got closer, she realized it was a pony’s head and face and it was looking at her.

It was her grandfather. Lightning Charger, former captain of the Wonderbolts, her idol and confidant. A tear crept out of her eyes as she hurried towards the face, memories of the last time she saw him alive when he looked so healthy and full of life before he suffered a heart attack and died, not ten minutes after they last saw each other.

Dust picked up speed as she headed towards it, the head shaped clouds seemingly turning to look at her. It seemed like it was smiling as she approached, which made her well up with emotion, but as the cloud turn to look past her, it’s form fell apart.

The clouds started to part rapidly as she got closer, revealing the searing light of the sun behind. The heat was sudden and intense, Dust having to cover her face as the sensation of burning became apparent to her. She looked over to see her wings in flames, falling apart as her momentum ebbed and she started to fall.

She did everything she could. She tried to pat and flap her wings and even rolled but instead started to tumble through the air in her desperate bid to put the flames out, but they only got worse as her velocity increased. The ground was coming fast, as if gleefully wanting to meet her. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t as her ears registered one thing: the crowd was still cheering.

***

Dust sat bolt upright, gasping in most of the air in her vicinity. Her eyes were wide as saucers and she breathed heavily as the environment registered in her mind.

She was in her bedroom in the Wonderhawks’ house in Ponyville. The room was pitch black, suggesting it was late at night, but she didn’t remember ever going to bed. It felt so long ago, almost forgotten behind the nightmare she’d just awoken from.

She turned and sat on the edge of her bed, knocking the bed sheets on the floor without a care for them. She was vaguely aware of the tear making it’s way down her face at the thought of her grandfather, who’d raised her along with her grandmother. It didn’t feel like it had happened long ago when the news of their deaths reached her, but it still hurt to remember the moments when her happiness was suddenly destroyed by such devastating news.

She wiped the tear from her eye and spread her wings to reassure herself they were defiantly in tack. A thought arose though, how did she end up in her bed in Ponyville so quickly, considering they’d only just left Baltimare? She had gotten onto the train and started trying to get in as much weight training as she could before Fleetfoot’s ridiculous curfew, but her mind blanked out after that.

She thought harder, vaguely remembering an exchange between the two dress mares and her annoying spotter. It was then the realisation of the culprit hit her.

Spanner.

He tricked her. The potion he’d given her was just a sleeping potion and he’d lied to her in order to get her to drink it. She was angry as she jumped off the bed and headed for the door, throwing it open before walking down the corridor to Spanner’s room.

The corridor was dark as well, save for a light glowing from down stairs. There were voices as well, seemingly from the TV as the volume was set down.

“Rossi’s not going to find room through there- Ok, just ignore me.” Dust could make out.

She knocked on Spanner’s door, noticing the sound of the TV being rewound.

“Rossi’s not going to find room through there- Ok, just ignore me.” Dust heard again, catching her interest. She headed for the stairs and peered through the banister to see who there.

Concorde was sat in one of the beanbags that dotted the living room, surrounded by note pads as he rewound the footage he was watching again. It showed what looked like turn nine from Baltimare, with one flyer somehow managing to sneak through a tiny gap between the outside wall and the racer he was passing.

“That was incredible.” The commentator said as Concorde made a note. “Overtaking around the outside is never easy but doing so against somepony like Mercedes, as well as through a gap that small, is almost unheard of.”

“She’ll be regretting saying no one overtakes her around the outside now.”

Concorde paused the footage before rolling out of the beanbag and heading for the kitchen, grabbing his oversized mug as he went. After a couple steps, he paused and looked at Dust.

“Ah, Dust, welcome back to the land of the living.” He smiled before heading out of view.

Dust walked down the stairs and into the living room and had a closer look at the TV. It appeared to be the EBC’s live coverage of the race, with a list of the flyer’s abbreviated names down the left side of the screen, while the names and teams of Rossi and Mercedes were shown at the bottom to let the viewer know who they were focusing on. The lap counter at the top of the screen stated it was lap fifty four of eighty.

“What time is it?” Dust felt like asking as she’d just realized she didn’t know.

“Eleven thirty.” Concorde informed her as he made himself a cup of tea. “Want a cuppa?”

“No. What are you doing down here?”

“Just re-watching the race, see what I can learn and what else happened.”

“What could you learn from re-watching it?”

“All sorts, lass. How the others take corners, who looks distracted, where they're looking and stuff like that. Might help in the next race.”

Dust looked over at the paused image on the TV. She’d been watching some of the fastest pony’s on-board footage, so it probably was possible to learn something from watching at TV angles, even if she couldn’t control who they were watching.

“You missed out on the party, you know.” Concorde added.

“I doubt it.” Dust replied.

“Oh you did. Typhoon’s not happy with you but he’s willing to forgive and forget. Dash challenged Skyline to a drinking competition when Riggwelter was handing out drinks.

“You should have seen the state of her when we got her back this afternoon. We had to put her in the luggage cart across town and carry her into her own house.” He laughed, though Dust just thought the pair of them were probably lightweights.

Dust sat down in one of the beanbags as Concorde resumed the recorded race. It was odd watching a race she’d been in, even if the focus was further up the order with the leaders.

Spanner certainly didn’t tell her much about what was going on further ahead, but by the looks of things it wasn’t much. Wolke, Rossi and Mercedes were flying pretty much in convoy, one of the latter two occasionally ducking out of line to have a look at overtaking, with the one they were attacking occasionally moving over to defend.

After a lap, the camera started to watch Concorde fending off Quicksilver. Going into turn one, Concorde bobbled slightly and missed the apex, giving Quicksilver enough room to squeeze through.

“Overcooked that slightly. Wind must have caught me as well” Concorde commented, mostly to himself as he made a note.

Dust ignored him and looked at the lap count, which suddenly made her nervous. Her nerves grew until the camera suddenly changed from watching Quicksilver and Concorde, who seemed to be content in following, to watching her sliding down the track.

“That’s Lightning Dust!” DC exclaimed as the camera struggled to follow her down the road, the scots pony having been in the middle of a sentence regarding Quicksilver’s line of thought on defending.

“Somepony else has just hit the air fence as well.” Edwards injected as the camera focused on the air barrier, which was forced up and now held up by Typhoon, having slide under it.

“They’ve gone right underneath, that’ll be a heck of a job to get them out as the barrier’s going to be pinning them to the track.” DC said, Dust noticing the ‘TYH’ that indicated Typhoon’s position falling down the list on the left of the screen.

“There’s Lightning Dust returning to the track through the escape road.” Edwards said as the camera showed exactly that, Dust on the TV shaking her head before re-joining the track.

“I think it’s Typhoon under the air fence, he’s name’s tumbling down the order and he couldn’t have had worse luck.”

“I doubt Lightning Dust could of had worse luck either, it even looks like she’s broken her nose as the Safety Kart is deployed as they'll have to detach the air barrier from the barrier behind it to extract Typhoon.”

“Here’s a replay. It looks like Lightning Dust is in Auroras Encore’s slipstream, Typhoon goes to have a look on Lightning Dust and there, Lightning Dust goes to overtake Aurora and collides with Typhoon, seemingly unaware he was there.”

Both Dust and Concorde winced as the replay showed the pair hit the wall and then tumble down the track. Dust didn’t remember tumbling, but it didn’t take long for her to land on and spin on her belly as she narrowly missed the barrier Typhoon got stuck under.

“I don’t envy you there.” Concorde remarked as the commentators discussed why the Safety Kart was necessary.

“Why would you? Didn’t Maffett say you hit a grandstand?” Dust asked, subconsciously checking her nose which now seemed to be fine.

“Yeah, but I was knocked out in impact there.” He smiled before they looked back at the TV.

She watched with slightly morbid curiosity as the when the cameras followed her into the pits for her forced stop to see the medic. She even felt a bit sick when she saw her nose had been pointing slightly to the left before it was healed, revulsion shared by the commentator when Dust spat blood into the nearby drain.

The race soon restarted, with Zip Line pulling away as Rossi dived past Wolke for second. The camera lingered looking back down the track from above turn one, spotting Concorde look to the inside of Quicksilver before the latter covered the line.

Through turn three, Aperto knocking Power Drive out of the race as Maverick held up the following pack when he came to a stop to avoid the accident.

As the rest of the race played out, Dust spent more time watching the list of abbreviated names on the left, waiting for ‘LTD’ to move up ahead of ‘ARE’ as she remembered her laps behind Aurora, but the camera remained focused on Zip Line and Rossi at the front.

Concorde started scribbling more notes as the race ended, the coverage continuing with a cool down lap and podium presentation before focusing on the EBC’s three presenters.

Concorde started cleaning up the mass of note pads he had dotted around his beanbag as the presenters discussed what happened in the race, with a few replays thrown in to illustrate points. Before long, however, they started discussing the rookies of the field.

“I think we’ve been blessed with some fabulous new talent this year.” The griffin EJ said. “Lotus Stream hasn’t done badly, Auroras Encore and Rainbow Dash have been solid so far, but the standouts so far would be Maverick, even in the single race he’s had today, Lightning Dust with her qualifying performance yesterday and Concorde, who’s scored in both races.

“However, they’re young and have a lot to learn. Lightning Dust is far too aggressive and she exhausted herself before the half way point of the race. Concorde, in stark contrast, is too conservative and I think he could do a lot more if he took more opportunities.”

“Conservative?” Concorde exclaimed in disbelief. “I’m not conservative, I spent half the race trying to find my way past ponies.”

“Looked more like you were happy to follow them.” Dust commented.

“I don’t need to duck and dive around, it’s pointless unless you’re actually doing something. I mean, I’ve watched your footage, you rarely follow the same line twice and waste quite a lot of speed.” Concorde continued, confusing her.

“I’m flying as fast as I can. That’s the whole point of racing, surely.”

“The point is finishing in as fast a time as possible, but that doesn’t mean flying at a hundred present maximum at all times. You lost somewhere in the realm of forty seconds and four places by exhausting yourself.”

“And how much did you lose sitting pretty?”

“Look, Dust, we’re a team and we should be trying to get the best out of each other, but you don’t help yourself.”

“Whatever, I’m going to bed.” Dust opted to said, ending a pointless argument with someone who wouldn’t understand her point.

“Fair enough. ‘night.” Concorde called after her as she went up the stairs.

Once she was gone, he just shrugged and sighed. She was quick for sure, but it’d been a long time since he’d encountered someone so clueless, but at least it meant he wasn’t likely to have to worry about her when he was racing.

Comments

[Piano pony]

A good chapter like always, it took me a while to start reading this again. I just didn't feel like it but whatever. Can't wait for the next chapter