ECRL: The Wonderhawks

by WildFire15

Harder than it Looks

Rainbow Dash, Lightning Dust and Concorde did as Spitfire said, flying up to and standing on the clouds next to the balloon. The unicorn in the balloon waved as they landed.

“You two took your time.” She said, her accent similar to Concorde’s.

“Let’s hope they don’t get lost around this.” Concorde chuckled, winking at Maffett. “That’s Maffett, by the way.” He added.

“Hi!” Rainbow Dash smiled before turning to look at the track.

“Keep your eye on her, she’s a tricky one.” Concorde added.

“Only for your, Corde.” Maffett smiled, arranging what looked like several flags in the basket.

“Aww, you’re making me blush now.”

“That’s just because there’s no room in your brain for the blood.” Maffett smiled.

“Think I should resort to slitting my legs to let some of it out?”

“Well, I won’t stop you and I won’t clean up either.”

Dash ignored their weird banter and focused on the track. The first two corners were wide and fast right hand corners, leading into a series of tight corners that came up one after the other in quick succession. They in turn led into the small loop-de-loop, which was followed by a hairpin that brought them back onto the straight they were stood on.

Simple enough, she thought. One hundred laps and she’d show up this stallion who couldn’t pronounce his words and show Spitfire the full breadth of her talents. Her spot on the Wonderbolts team was assured.

“You guys ready?” Maffett asked, levitating the Equestrian flag up so the three could see it.

“Let’s do this!” The three said in unison, each quickly stretching their wing and legs before getting on their marks.

Dash and Dust pressed their front hooves into the cloud track surface and raised their wings, waiting for Maffett to raise the flag. She did so and in unison, both Dash and Dust started flapping their wings in short, sharp beats, raising their hinds off the ground while using their front hooves to stop themselves hurtling forwards.

Maffett held the flag up right for a good three seconds before waving it down, signalling the Pegasi to start. Dash and Dust pulled themselves forwards with their front hooves, giving themselves a quick bit of acceleration before their wings fully took control and sped them forwards.

For a split second, Dash pictured Spitfire’s awe struck face, before she noticed something that nearly made her stop dead in surprise. Concorde had made a far better start and he was getting away from her and Dust at a huge amount of speed. She wasn’t sure how he did it, but she did notice his wing flaps were different to what she had seen most Pegasus do. They were long, deliberate flaps as each slow movement forwards was quickly followed by a sharp flap backwards from front to back at a slight downward angle, rather than straight up and down. Generating so little lift like that, she was amazed he was even airborne.

Dash cut her thoughts short when she realize that the first turn was right in front of her. Concorde was already fully banked over, wings stretched out to glide through the corner. She was neck and neck with Dust, so the pair tilted into the corner, straightening up on the exit. Concorde had already exited the second corner, so both mares flapped furiously to try and make up for what was clearly a bad start in the racing world.

Their attempts led them both to not only miss the apex of the second corner by several meters, but very nearly led both to meet the hanger wall. Rainbow Dash was on the outside and closest to the wall, so she quickly brought herself to a stop so she didn’t hit it. She looked over at the track as Lightning Dust got back onto it to see Concorde rapidly tilting and rolling left and right to navigate the series of tight corners.

His form was almost bullet like, pressed together and stretched out so his body met as little resistance as possible, bending with the corners while his wings seemed to do little real work as they angled and occasionally flapped to propel and glide through each turn.

Dash returned to the track, focusing on the apex of the first corner of the sequence. Starting from the outside edge of the corner, she turned in and the tip of her inside wing perfectly glanced the apex, but almost immediately she realized something was wrong as she drifted far too wide to stand a chance of worrying the next apex.

She decided to just ignore the corner and turned to try and take the next one, noticing that Lightning Dust was struggling with the corners as much as she was. Dust had just missed the apex for the last corner in the sequence and was about to re-join the track a quarter of the way into the loop-de-loop. Out of the corner of her eye, Dash noticed something scarlet hurtle past her in the opposite direction over the start/finish line and her heart sunk.

This was going to be a very long one hundred laps.

***

Spitfire and Hurricane watched the three young Pegasus lap the circuit. Concorde was consistently hitting each apex, gradually getting quicker each lap as he got used to the course while Rainbow Dash and Lightning Dust seemed to have descended to swearing at each corner when they missed it. Their wide, looping style of cornering was ideal for flashy performance flying, but on a race track it only served to hinder them.

“So this is the best the Wonderbolts Academy has produced?” Hurricane asked.

“Completely out of their comfort zone, but yes.” Spit replied.

“What were you thinking, mare?” He asked as Rainbow Dash missed the apex of the hairpin by some distance after taking the loop too fast.

“I was thinking their competitive streak might just encourage them to improve.” Spit smiled as Concorde lapped Lightning Dust for the third time. “Racing does requite precise movement and an ability to judge where another pony’s going.”

“Well it’s getting them angry at the very least” Hurricane replied as Lightning Dust explosively swore at the sight of Concorde going past her again.

“Besides, with them still officially being Wonderbolts, it means I can keep them out of your hooves.”

Hurricane sighed. He would have killed for that level of talent in his team. Not that any of his team were incapable, but ponies like that would have really made an impression.

“I’m still struggling to understand how this charade will help the Hawks, or even you for that matter.” He said after a while.

“Well, it’s simple. Or it is in my head, anyway.” Spit said as Rainbow Dash missed the second corner again. “Since Money Bags has been in charge, we’ve been slowly turned into an easily marketed mess. I need to get control of my team back, not to mention some flyers with genuine skill.”

“It does seem that you, Echo and Soarin’ are the most competent flyers in the Wonderbolts while the others are there to smile and look good.”

“Yeah and they can’t do anything! You know that ‘Fire Aurora’ move I told you about? They refused to do it because it might ruin their freaking manes! If I can get control back, I can get competent flyers in my lead team again.”

“Sounds like wishful thinking.” Hurricane remarked as Dash and Dust very nearly flew into each other after the former missed out the loop.

“You know too well this sort of thing takes time, Hurri. Besides, I’ll finally have some decent competition with you guys back on the scene.” She added with a wink. “You enjoying the show, Echo?” Spitfire called over her shoulder.

Echo had been sat out of the way, scribbling notes furiously. It seemed she was nearly the end of her note pad already.

“This might take a lot of work.” She said after a while as she observed how the three Pegasus on track took the loop, Dust nearly running into the back of Concorde as he slowed to take the following hairpin. “There’s promise, if not much consistency at the moment.”

“Is Fleetfoot the best pony to manage our team?” Hurricane asked over more explosive swearing.

“She is my number two for a reason, you know.” Spit replied.

“Who else is involved?”

“Well, there’s you, me, Echo, those three, Maffett and when they reply to my letters I have a pair of professional spotters to help Dash and Dust. You sure you don’t want me to find a spotter for Concorde too?”

“No, no. He and Maffett work well together when they aren’t bickering.”

Spitfire chuckled as she checked her watch. By her estimates Concorde had completed seventy two laps while Dash and Dust were about four laps behind at this point. She continued watching them, happy in the knowledge this humiliation will spur them on for when they do get to their first race.