Pergasi are creatures of the sky. But what happens when one flies as high as they can only to find themselves still longing to fly higher? With a little help from the most unlikely of sources one young pegasus will find out.
Pergasi are creatures of the sky. But what happens when one flies as high as they can only to find themselves still longing to fly higher? With a little help from the most unlikely of sources one young pegasus will find out.
Sweetie Belle’s question was answered by a growl from the pegasus filly driver, that and allowing the wagon to run over a rock she could have easily dodged. The jolt and a glare that clearly implied ‘don’t distract me’ silenced Scootaloo’s friends quickly enough. But the reprieve was shot lived.
“Are you sure ya know where we are?”
“Yes Apple Bloom, I know exactly where we are.” Scootaloo lied. She knew they were in the hills north of Ponyville. Exactly where in those hills eluded her and more to the point she was starting to think she miss-counted how hills they had passed.
“Ya sure? Ya said that abandon building ya wanted to explore was ‘like five hills away’ somethi’n like ten hills ago.”
Scootaloo sighed, she was frustrated, but her earth pony friend was right, she had said that. While Apple Bloom didn’t seem to notice that they had been snaking their way through the area the young pegasus thought the building should be at it was also clear that it, or they, wasn’t where she thought. Scootaloo double checked Cloudsdale and Canterlot. North and northeast respectively so she knew she wasn’t totally lost, though it crossed her mind that maybe she had overshot before leaving the dirt road and maybe her target was now south instead of north. She motored her wings to push her scooter and the wagon of friends onward. One more hill, then I’ll try south. She promised herself.
As Scootaloo crested the next hill she slowed and scanned the area. Something caught her eye. It was either an oddly colored boulder behind that hill north of them or it was the corner of the building she was looking for. She veered hard to inspect the aberration, in the back of her mind she was praying for it to be the building so she wouldn’t have to admit defeat to her friends. The orange filly ignored the questions coming from her friends about the sudden change of direction and powered her wings one more time to rush down the current hill and up the next.
“Hey, there it is! See? Told you I knew where I was going!” Scootaloo cheered at her vindication as she crested the next hill and spotted the lone rusty metal structure, built in the style of a pegasus cloud hanger building.
“Finally! You’ve been rattling us around that wagon so long my bottom went numb.” Sweetie Belle said as the while unicorn filly jumped out of the wagon and started shaking her pink and purple tail about while kicking her back legs to get the tingling to go away.
Performing a similar stretch Apple Bloom shared her newfound concerns, “Umm… Scootaloo, Ah don’t think this building is as abandon as you think.” She pointed a yellow hoof at the sheet metal skin of the building, “Some of those welds look recent.”
“Yeah, because I could totally see that from a thousand feet up when Rainbow Dash brought me back from Cloudsdale,” Scootaloo rolled her eyes to add to her sarcasm, as she tossed her helmet in the wagon and shook the sweat from her purple mane.
“An listen, is that ah run’n faucet?” Apple Bloom added as she fixed the pink bow in her red mane so it would be comfortable again.
“Naw that sounds like a welding torch.” Scootaloo guessed.
“How do you know what a welding torch sounds like?” Sweetie Belle questioned her pegasus friend.
“What? You never hang out at the machine shop just to watch them weld stuff? It’s like those sparklers they give out at the fireworks festival, only bigger and cooler!” Scootaloo defended her odd knowledge.
“Girls… does it really matter? Exploring an abandon building is one thing but somepony’s here, we can’t just go barg’n in there without permission, that’d be trespass’n!” Apple Bloom tried to bring the conversation back on topic.
“Then we won’t. But I didn’t just haul you two all the way out here just to go home empty hoofed,” Scootaloo asserted as she boldly pounded her hoof on the metal door as loud as she could.
“It’s not locked!” a young male voice shouted back from inside.
“Sounds like an invitation to me,” Scootaloo gave a sly smirk as she turned the handle of the door.
Inside the three fillies found several smashed up sets of metal wings, what looked like a diving suit with a fancy helmet and a worktable. Standing at the worktable was a lone pegasus colt who seemed to be welding small metal tubes to a set of triangular wings, connected by a thin frame. One observation of note about the wings was that the middle section of the bottom wing was cut out.
The colt welding the wings only looked to have maybe two years on any of the crusaders at best, placing him to be of the age were he would be expected to have just finished basic schooling and be apprenticing at a job. His coat seemed white and his mane was a sky blue, though it was hard to tell given the only light in the room was coming from a lone lantern that was way too small to light the hanger it was in.
Sweetie Belle immediately zipped over to the strange suit and began examining it, pondering if its design was something that might impress her older sister. Ultimately concluding it was too plane and too simple.
Apple Bloom stopped to admire the welding sparks with Scootaloo for a moment before she ran out of patience and left her pegasus friend to go admire the metal wings instead, wondering why anypony would make hang gliders from metal.
Scootaloo watched the welding sparks just long enough to feel she had made her point about them being fun to watch before darting into the maze of scarped metal wings.
With the last part of the current weld finished the colt turned off the welding torch, set his mask aside and turned to address his guests, “You can just… oh, uh, hi.” He blinked his greenish hazel eyes in bewilderment.
“Were you expecting somepony else? We knocked and you gave us permission to come in.” the pegasus filly answered him, while she and her friends came out of the scrap heap and lined up.
“Hmm, I guess I did, but who are you? And why are you out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Apple Bloom! Sweetie Belle! Scootaloo, And we are the cutie mark crusaders! We were out here crusading for our cutie marks as cutie mark crusader explorers!” The three fillies introduced themselves, while Scootaloo continued, “I saw this place on my way back from Cloudsdale and wanted to come explore it.”
“I guess that’s as good a reason as any to be in the middle of nowhere.” The colt thought aloud.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? What is this place? Why is it in the middle of nowhere?” The fillies peppered him with a rapid-fire barrage of questions.
“Whoa slow down!” He said, as he replayed the questions in his mind, sorting them out from each other. “Okay let’s see, My name is Light Seeker. This is my workshop and it’s in the middle of nowhere because rocket experiments and cloud buildings don’t mix well.”
“Do you live here? You own this place? How do rockets and cloud building have anything to do with this place being in the middle of nowhere?” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle continued to ask questions together, although Scootaloo seemed to have gotten lost in thought the moment she heard his name.
“No, I Live in Cloudsdale…” Light Seeker answered the first question but paused on the second, as he didn’t actually know who technically owned the land. “…I’m not sure. As for being here, well the short version is. My first rocket kinda blowup in my face and the blast wave tore apart my cloud house… and some of the neighbor’s too. And while cloud houses are really easy to rebuild you’d be surprised how mad some ponies get when you drop their stuff twenty feet or so… or five thousand for the stuff that didn’t have cloud-walker enchantments on them and got knocked off whatever was holding them up. Anyway the mayor of Cloudsdale made my dad promise to never let me do rocket experiments at home again, so he helped me buy this field and we made this workshop.”
“If you live in Cloudsdale why here instead of closer to there?” Sweetie Belle Asked.
“Because trains don’t go to Cloudsdale and sometimes I need to order heavy custom parts and stuff. So I didn’t want to be too much of a hassle to the ponies who have to deliver them.”
“Then why so far outside of town?”
“Look at me. I’m just a colt, I don’t have the kinda money to buy a proper place in town. We had to come this far out to find something affordable considering the only thing we put here was a hobby workshop,” Light Seeker gestured to the simple workspace around him.
“Y’all kept talk’n about rockets but all ah see here is these metal wings. Where are these rockets of yours?” Apple Bloom asked.
Light Seeker pointed at the tubes on the underside of the wing he was just welding, “What do you think these tubes with the pointy ends are? That’s where the rocket motors go.” In the back of the colt’s mind he was thinking to himself, asking why he was even bothering to talk to these fillies so much when he wasn’t even a sociable pony, all he wanted to do was get back to his hobby work. But he didn’t want to be mean and just tell them to leave either.
“How did you afford all of this? When we need to make big stuff we usually have to borrow the supplies from our big sisters.” Sweetie Belle inquired, with a hint of suspicion in her voice.
“I’m an apprentice at the Cloudsdale machine shop. And while the salary of an apprentice may not be much, you’d be surprised how cheap stuff is when you make most of it yourself.”
“Light Seeker!” Scootaloo suddenly shouted, bringing all eyes on to her. “I know you! You’re the one next to Rainbow Dash! That’s where I’ve heard your name before!”
“Wait. What are you talking about, Rainbow Dash isn’t here?” Sweetie Belle asked her friend.
“No. In the Equestrian book of pegasus records! It’s like the only book I own. And next to Rainbow Dash’s page for ‘Fastest pegasus flight ever’ is the one for ‘highest pegasus flight ever’ and that’s where I’ve seen him before,” Scootaloo explained.
Light Seeker sighed, then corrected the filly, “It’s ‘Highest altitude achieved, without the aid of magic’ I’m pretty sure Luna’s still got me beat on highest altitude ever.” In the back of his mind he was still trying to figure out why the three fillies were still asking these questions. How did knowing his life story possibly help them in anyway? Didn’t they come here to explore? Well, they had seen what was here so why hadn’t they moved on?
A bang on the door rescued Him for more questions. This time Light Seeker opened the door himself. As he opened the door and was bathed in the full light of day for the first time since the crusaders had arrived, they saw his coat wasn’t the pure white they had first assumed and that it actually had the slightest tint of blue to it.
Beyond the door were several pegasi, a stallion and two mares were waiting with a crate. The stallion spoke for them, “Hey Light, you know the deal.” He then nudged a clipboard on the corner of the crate.
The crusaders watched silently while the young colt signed the paper on the clipboard, making note of the nervous look on the two mare’s faces. “As always, you can put it in the back.” Light Seeker said once he’d finished the paperwork, pointing to the far corner of the hanger. The two mares took the towlines attached to the crate and slowly hovered their way over to the indicated spot. Once the crate was set gently down the two pegasus mares couldn’t seem to get out of the hanger fast enough.
A sad look appeared on the face of the stallion as he looked on Light Seeker, before he sighed and spoke to the colt, “Light, Why do you keep doing this? It’s like everypony but you knows you’re throwing your life away chasing these silly dreams of your. You’ll never find your place in life and earn your cutie mark if you don’t give up on this waste of time first.” The stallion’s tone was sincere, making it clear he was just trying to offer honest advice.
“Yeah you’re way too old to still be a blank flank, so you’ve got to be doing something wrong.” One of the mares said in a teasing tone, drawing a glare from the stallion. After a moments pause, the stallion took the clipboard in his mouth and took off, the two mares followed soon after.
“Hey you’re ah blank flank too?!” Apple Bloom asked excitedly.
The sudden sound and feeling of presence close behind him startled Light Seeker, so that he leapt into the air, coming to a hover a few feet off the ground before he remembered he had three fillies visiting his workshop. He then noticed the earth pony’s words, namely ‘too’ and took note that, despite also being a little on the old side to not have a cutie mark, all three of the fillies flanks were as blank as his own.
“Yes I am, as are you apparently.” He said when he finally got around to responding.
“Ah don’t get it. Ya earned a spot in a record book but not a cutie mark? How’d ya pull that off?”
“I suspect if I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t still be a blank flank. But my understanding is that a cutie mark is earned when a pony realizes what their destiny is. In my case it I think destiny and I disagree.”
“What does that mean?”
“I know what my destiny is, I can feel it every time I use one of my rocket assist wing packs to fly higher then ever before. I just… need to get higher… I know my destiny is up there, I just know it.” Light Seeker answered, not even close to convinced by the words he’d been telling himself for years.
“Wait these metal wing thingies actually flew? But they look so beat up!” Sweetie Belle inquired.
Happy to change the subject, Light Seeker stated showing the fillies the collection of his past wing packs, “Somepony once said ‘success teaches you nothing, but you can learn a great deal from your failures.’ These are my failures, I keep them here to remind me why I made the changes I did to the wing pack’s design. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My first attempt was what you’d expect from any pegasus, I just flew as high as my wings would carry me. Turns out when you get too high the air gets too thin and I passed out, and woke up once I’d fallen back into denser air. After that I took a diver’s air tank up with me but then the thin air got in my way again, seems thinner air also means less lift from your wings, and that’s where this comes in.”
Light Seeker paused, the glint of joy from talking about something he liked seemed to lessen as he moved on. Then he pointed at the stripped down remains of a wing pack that, when it was whole, would have doubled his wingspan but was little more than a frame now, “This is my first rocket assist wing pack. It helped me fly higher then I had before but it just wasn’t good enough. It was still in good shape when I realized I needed to make a better one so I kinda stripped it for parts when I made the second one.”
He then trotted over to a pile of scraps, “Once I realized that rocket motors burn up their fuel too fast I knew I needed a wing pack that could go faster if it was going to get me as high as I needed. This was my first wing pack to go supersonic. And as you can see it turns out if you push a straight wing that fast they kinda shake themselves apart. It tore itself apart on my first test flight with it.”
“Wait! You’ve been supersonic? You’ve done a sonic rainboom?” Scootaloo stopped him from going on.
“Yes and No, it seems if you use rockets to push a pegasus supersonic you only get a regular sonic boom. Although I do recall hearing somepony proved the legend of the sonic rainboom was true. If what you said about the record book is right them I’m guessing that would be that Rainbow Dash you mentioned.”
“Yeah! She’s the fastest, most awesome pegasus ever!” the orange pegasus asserted.
“Moving on then,” Light Seeker moved over to a badly smashed up wing pack that had once been a similar triangle design to the one he was working on, though only it was a single-decker. “This was the first rocket wing pack to earn me the record for ‘highest altitude unaided by magic’. It also landed me in the hospital for a week with depressurization sickness. Turns out that divers aren’t the only ones that can get that, go figure. Thankfully my aunt was watching that flight and intercepted me on the way down. She got me out of the wing pack and took me to the hospital, leaving the wing pack to fall to its doom.” He lingered for a moment as a shiver ran down his spine recalling the pain of recovering from the attempt before moving on.
Coming to the final set of metal wings, it too shared the design of the previous one but like the very first one had been salvaged for parts, “This is my most recent failure… actually it didn’t go that bad. It was the first one that I had that pressure suit for,” Light Seeker gestured to the strange gray suit not far from his worktable. “It took me higher then ever before and the suit kept me from getting sick, but there were two problems. First I ran out of rockets before I could get high enough. And second a delta-wing metal glider has to fly way too fast to land on the ground safely so I had to improvise last second and land on a lake water-ski-style. Scared myself half to death when I thought I’d run out of lake before I’d run out of momentum.”
Light Seeker came back to the double-decker wing pack on his worktable, “I wanted to make sure I had enough rockets to fire to keep going until I reach… whatever I’m looking for… So that’s way I added the second deck to this one… and then there’s… no never mind.”
“What’s wrong? Why do you look sad all of a sudden?” Sweetie Belle asked in a soft tone.
Light Seeker deflated. The more he thought about it, the more this walk through his past made him think of how else everything could go wrong. “It’s just… who am I kidding? I’ve almost killed myself twice doing this… Maybe those guys were right. Maybe my dream is impossible, maybe I can’t make my destiny what I want it to be, maybe I should just give up,” he whimpered.
“No.” The bold simple statement drew all eyes to its speaker, Scootaloo. Her eyes were glaring right into his, burning with a righteous indignation that demanded his attention as she continued, “You will make this work. You will fly higher then ever before. You will find your destiny up there. You will earn your cutie mark. You will make your dream come true! And we’re going to help you!” The passion in her eyes and voice made it clear these weren’t just statements, to her these were cold hard truths that made Light Seeker feel like a foal for even doubting them for a second.
Scootaloo then turned to her friends, showing them the smile on her face and a glint in her eye that meant something new entirely. Together the three fillies shouted, “Cutie mark crusader rocket scientists!”
Light Seeker’s mind was spinning. Why did these fillies want to help him? Why did they care? It was obvious that something he had said triggered something in the pegasus filly and that there was more to this than just helping some random colt trying to satisfy an inexplicable desire to fly higher than ever, but what? Were her friends only helping because she wanted to? Or was it because they too had reached an advanced age without earning a cutie mark? They called themselves ‘cutie mark crusaders’ after all, so was this all about cutie marks to them? All these questions and more ran through his head, yet he wouldn’t have time to answer any of them.
“What do you need us to do?” The question drew his attention to three smiling fillies, eagerly awaiting a response.
What did he need them to do? What could they do? Sure they were close to his age but everything he had learned about rockets and stuff he had learned on his own, outside the classroom so did they know anything about rockets? One was a fellow pegasus so she should know about basic flight but so did he so that didn’t help. There wasn’t really much left to do on his wing pack anyway, only finish welding on the last three rocket mount points, wiring up the last of the controls for the rocket. And…
His eyes drifted to the pressure suit. On his last flight he noticed that the air tank was draining much faster than it should have. That meant the suit wasn’t truly airtight and needed to be redesigned. A smile graced the colt’s face.
“Come here,” he said as he made his way over to a desk not far from the pressure suit and pulled a piece of thick fabric from one of the drawers. “This is a sample of the fabric the pressure suit is made of. The thing is, the pressure suit I have isn’t good enough, so if you can find somepony willing to help me make one that’s truly airtight that would really help me. Show them this sample and tell them this is what they will need to make the full body suit out of.”
“This is perfect!” The crusaders cheered as they took the sample fabric and darted out the door.
The colt stepped outside long enough to politely wave goodbye to the fillies as Scootaloo motored her wings setting out on her scooter and towing her friends in the wagon hitched to it. Light Seeker could admire their enthusiasm, it reminded him of himself before the mistakes with the rocket wings packs had taught him to take everything he did with the deadly seriousness it deserved. However, given how hard it had been for him just to find a dive shop all the way in Fillydelphia willing to work with such a stiff unforgiving resin-covered fabric, he seriously doubted the crusaders would have any luck finding anyplace around here willing to work with it. But this wild goose chase did get them out of his mane so he could finally get back to work.
He turned to go back inside when he noticed the shadow cast by the open door frame. The sun told him that the day was almost over and that he barely had time to fly back to Cloudsdale if he was going to be home before sunset like he promised. How had he let the day slip by? He quickly locked the door to the hanger and took off flying for home.
* * * * * * *
Technically shadows had covered the land by the time Light Seeker neared his home in Cloudsdale. However, at the cloud city’s altitude it took another few minutes before the sun would fade from that high up and that was all the buffer he needed to reach the front door before the promised deadline.
“Cutting it rather close aren’t you mister?” the blue pegasus mare with the silver mane remarked, as the colt zipped in the door sliding to a stop more or less in the middle of the living room.
“Sorry mom, some fillies wandered into the workshop and wouldn’t stop talking to me, I lost track of time.”
“Really? Somepony just wandered into your workshop way out in the middle of nowhere?” she asked, clearly doubting the likelihood of such a claim.
“Yeah, they said they were out exploring. Called themselves ‘crusaders’ or something.” Light Seeker said, dismissing the topic.
With a sigh his mother pushed him toward the dining room, “I hope you were at least polite to them, now come on you’ve kept your family waiting long enough.”
As the two sat down at the table the white stallion with a dark blue mane lowered the paper he was reading and let out a sigh of relief, “Finally, I was beginning to think it would be worth your mother’s wrath to start without you.” A glare of daggers came from the mare in question. “What? Come on dear, I’m sure he’s old enough to understand ideas like family tradition and honor without having to eat dinner together every night.” He defended himself with a nervous laugh.
“And that’s why I give him a pass when you let him stay overnight in that shack, but as long as he’s home we should at lest try to be a family.”
Halfway through dinner the day’s events were creating some nagging questions Light Seeker’s mind, experience had taught him that his father was usually a good source of answers to general life questions. But he just couldn’t think of a good way to phrase the questions in his head, they either became too wordy or seemed too rude. “Dad. Can I ask you something?” the colt asked, recalling that to be the safest way of asking something that might hurt somepony’s feelings.
“Sure, what’s on you’re mind?”
“Are all fillies crazy?”
“No, just most of them.” The stallion then glanced over to his wife and sighed, “I’m sleeping on the roof tonight aren’t I? Well, I guess I should clarify…”
Morning had come and Light Seeker was still trying to sort out his father’s words from the previous night. From what he could tell he had learned two things. First, it was apparently considered normal for colts and stallions to never understand the way fillies and mares thought. Second, talking about it in their presence got you in trouble, as his father did in fact end up sleeping outside on the roof.
A frown appeared on Light’s face as he considered more important things. Like the fact that three certain fillies had distracted him yesterday and that meant he had more to do today than he had intended. Sighing, the colt hung his head in defeat, he had hoped to be done with the wing pack by noon today and that would give him some time to go to the park and have some fun before the weekend was over. But with the leftover things on his to do list from yesterday there was no way he’d have time for that now.
Light Seeker landed in front of the hanger workshop, unlocked the door and returned the key to it’s hiding spot. Tossing his saddlebags on his desk, he fetched the welding torch and got to work welding the last of the rocket mount attachment points to the wing pack.
He had just finished welding the last mounting point when a bang rang out from the door. He wasn’t expecting any more deliveries so he guessed it had to be the fillies from yesterday. But given their enthusiasm the previous day he didn’t expect them to give up after only one day.
“She said yes!” was shouted at him the instant he opened the door to find the trio of fillies.
“Who said wha-? Wait, you actually found somepony willing to work with… you did show them the sample fabric right?” Light Seeker stumbled over his words, still finding it hard to believe that they had succeeded.
“Yeah! We even made sure to tell her that it was going to be a full body pleasure suit.” Sweetie Belle squeaked with pride.
“Diving suit.” Apple Bloom corrected incorrectly.
“I’m telling you it looks like a jumpsuit to me!” Scootaloo insisted.
“Whatever the point is Rarity got the idea that it was a full body thingy and said ‘yes’.”
The fillies continued to argue over what the pressure suit looked like to them but Light Seeker was too busy thinking to pay any attention to that. He had planed on maybe taking the suit back to the dive shop that made it to have it modified. But that would mean waiting until Heaven knows when for him to get one of his parents to take him back to Fillydelphia just to try.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” the colt whispered to himself. His rocket pack flights had taught him more than enough, that no matter how much he planed things out, he usually had to do a lot of improvising to get anything close to his intended outcome. While a trip into the nearby town hadn’t been in his plans at all, if it could get him a remade pressure suit in a timely manner it was worth the trivial risk of wasting a day. “Okay. Who is this Rarity and where can I find her?” Light Seeker asked loud enough to be heard this time.
“Come on! We’ll show ya!” Apple Bloom cheered as she and her friends stopped arguing and bolted out the door. Light grabbed his saddlebags, tossed two scrolls from his desk into them, locked the door on his way out and followed the trio of fillies.
Scootaloo lead the way on her scooter, towing her friends in the usual wagon while Light Seeker flew along side them. First they headed straight east until they hit the dirt road, where the colt noticed a small wooden arrow pointing toward his workshop that he didn’t remember existing before. From there the crusaders turned south leading him toward Ponyville.
About half way to town Light Seeker couldn’t help but notice that as impressively fast as the pegasus filly was on the dirt road, even hauling her friends, she was easy to keep up with while flying. And that brought a question into the colt’s mind. “Scootaloo, can I ask you something?”
“What’s up?”
“I was wondering. If all you came out here to do was give me a message and then lead me back to town, why did you bring them along?” He asked motioning to the two fillies in the wagon.
“Because we’re the cutie mark crusaders, so we do things as a team.” Scootaloo responded as if the answer was so obvious that the question was silly.
“I don’t see how you need their help just to deliver a message and you’d be way faster if you weren’t hauling them around.”
“Are you saying that I should just ditch my friends out here in the middle of nowhere?” Scootaloo glared up and the colt.
“No! That would be rude to bring somepony out someplace and then make them hike back on their own. You-”
“Exactly!” Scootaloo interrupted, with the accusing sound of her voice lessened.
“…I’m just saying you should’ve left them at home to begin with and done the errand alone.” He whimpered.
“What’s with colts always thinking they have to do things alone?” Apple Bloom asked, drawing a round of laughter from her friends.
“We don’t. But it reduces the number of variables at least.”
“What’s a variable?” Scootaloo asked.
“I think it has something to do with math.” Sweetie Belle answered.
Light Seeker shook his head in disappointment, so much for any of them knowing more about math than him, though he explained anyway. “A variable is something with many possible values. Like in X plus Y equals Z you have three variables. You can give X and Y any value you want and those dictate the value of Z.”
“Dictate? Isn’t that like mean people who run countries?” Apple Bloom asked?
“No, I think that’s dictator.” Sweetie Belle guessed.
“Well wouldn’t dictate be what dictators do?” Apple Bloom defended her guess.
“What are you two? Dictionaries?” Scootaloo said, rolling her eyes.
The three fillies continued to argue, but Light Seeker was dumbfounded. How in creation did a conversation about math turn into one about governmental archetypes? Did one of them just mention crystal ponies? How they hey did they have any thing to do with anything they had been talking about? A building pain in his head compelled him to mutter, “I’ll wait for you ahead.” And with that Light flapped his wings harder and sped on ahead, not sure and not really caring if his arguing guides heard him.
Light Seeker landed at the edge of Ponyville, at the first split in the road. Though it only took a few minutes for the crusaders to come into view it was long enough to clear his head. As they approached it became clear that at least they had finished their heated debate on whatever wild tangent they ended up on.
The motor like buzz of Scootaloo’s wings intrigued the waiting colt and he wondered how you had to feather your wings to make them make that sound. He imitated the high speed flapping of the filly for a moment but only got a soft flittering noise. However she was doing it, it sounded cool to him.
“Why’d you ditch us?!” Scootaloo demanded, as soon as she was in earshot, she sounded mad but she looked worried.
“Because you three were giving me a headache.” Light answered honestly.
“Then why are you just sitting here?”
“Because I don’t know where I’m going and you three are supposed to be guiding me. This is the first fork in the road and I don’t know what way to go.”
“See? You shouldn’t have ditched us!” Scootaloo seemed relieved in such a way that Light Seeker could only assume her friends had blamed her for chasing him off.
That thought aside, Light was trying to figure out why she had rebuked at him just now. How had his plan not worked perfectly? He had bought himself a moment of peace and quite and tactically placed himself at the first place that he could make a wrong decision on the way to an unknown destination to wait for his guides. What had he done worthy of even masked anger? Giving up on finding the logic of it, he recalled his father’s advice and reminded himself that it was okay to admit that colts would never understand fillies.
The crusaders guided Light Seeker to what was possibly the most gaudy building in all of Ponyville, the Carousel Boutique. Its shape lived up to its name, and the inside was just as much a showpiece as the outside, with gemstone embroidery in every dress. Aside from the four foals the only other pony in the building was a white unicorn mare with a long purple mane and blue gems for a cutie mark.
The sound of hoofsteps caused the mare to quickly shut a curtain, hiding an unfinished work from public eyes, “Welcome to… oh hello girls, ah yes, you must be the dashing young gentlecolt they told me about. A pleasure to meet you, I am Rarity.”
“And you’ve seen the sample of the material you’ll need to work with?” Light asked.
“Why yes, but aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” Rarity asked, seemingly put off by the lack of formality.
“Light Seeker.” He said, giving a small nod as a sign of respect to offset his disinterested tone. He didn’t really mean to come across as rude by skipping a formal introduction, it was just that the colt never really considered who he was to be important to anything.
“Very well then Light Seeker, now these three told me you wanted a suit, though they seemed to have conflicting opinions as to what kind.”
“Yes, it needs to be a full body pressure suit, to protect me from depressurization sickness at high altitude, and the one I have now leaks too much, I’m worried it will drain the air tank too fast to keep it pressurized. Do you think you can do that?”
“A few years ago I’d have said ‘no’ up front. However, thanks to my friends I’ve become more accustom to accepting challenges outside my comfort zone. And to be perfectly honest with you, I’ve found myself in need of a new source of inspiration of late.” Rarity answered, with a slightly embarrassed blush and a dart of the eyes toward the workspace she hid moments earlier.
Light Seeker spent the rest of the day discussing the needs of the suit and what he had learned that demanded changes to his first one. Like the need to add airtight metal joints at the legs and wings that wouldn’t stiffen even more once the suit was pressurized. Rarity had even been so generous as to treat him to lunch as they discussed the project. While she seemed slightly disappointed by his constant reminders that the suit was all about function, not form, she agreed to make the suit.
Flying home with plenty of time to beat sunset Light Seeker felt good about the day’s events. Having left behind the scroll with the formula for the resin needed to make the airtight fabric and a notice to the crusaders that he wouldn’t be back at his workshop until next saturday, everything seemed in order. But something was nagging him, like something felt missing. Double-checking his saddlebags he found everything he thought should to be there so he shrugged off the feeling and continued home.
* * * * * * *
At home Light Seeker was in his room minding his own business, waiting for dinner to be ready when he felt a presence in the room. Judging the weight of hoofsetps on a cloud floor was almost impossible. But he did hear one clue that allowed him to identify whom it was behind him, the ruffling sound of feathers with thick, coarse hairs, a stallion’s feathers. “Hey dad,” he said, without even looking.
“You continue to amaze me son.”
His dad called him ‘son’? That couldn’t be good, his dad only did that when it was time for a ‘serious’ talk, “That’s nice, I’m guessing you didn’t come up here to test my powers of perception though.”
“Again you’re powers of perception are correct.” The stallion chuckled, “Your mother seems to think you have ‘that look’ in your eye again.”
Light Seeker finally looked up from the homemade fireworks he had been making, looking to the mirror on his dresser. However, as far as he could tell both his eyes looked the same as always, they weren’t even bloodshot like when he snuck out late to watch a firework show. “What look in my eye?”
“The one you get when you’re almost done with one of your wing packs. While I may not be the keen eye your mother is, I do know that you make way more fireworks than usual when you get close to finishing your wing packs.”
The colt looked beside his workbench, the fireworks launcher he had made and expanded over the years was almost full again. He blinked as he stared at it, he could have sworn it was only half full last night. Did he really make that many in one evening? “But, I always make fireworks when I’m bored…” he defended, despite the apparent accuracy of his father’s observation.
“Not with that much zeal you don’t.”
His father was being too blunt with his responses, and the tone of voice told all the rest. “Are you saying you don’t want me to finish the wing pack?” Light Seeker guessed.
The stallion breathed a heavy sigh, “I’m not, but your mom would be very happy if you stopped strapping rockets to yourself.”
“I’ve always known mom worries about me. What are you saying?” Light Seeker asked, thinking there was no reason for his dad to restate what was already known and that they had to be having this conversation because something had changed, otherwise why bring the topic up?
“Do you remember the story of the pony with his head in the clouds?”
“The one about the pegasus that spent all his time looking at the sky, that he took forever to notice that the love of his life was an earth pony until he got injured and was forced to look at what was on the ground for once? Yes, dad. What of it?”
“I’m surprised you don’t have fireworks on your flank. Are you sure you’re not looking in the wrong place for your destiny too?” the stallion sighed deeply and added, “If I asked you to stop making the wing pack, would you?”
Light Seeker thought carefully about his response for a moment. “You taught me to fly, you taught me logic, reason, philosophy. You let me fill out order forms for rocket motors with your name on them, you were the only one who pushed me to chase my own dreams even when mom was against me. What changed?”
“I saw how close you were getting to the altitude record… I thought, if you got it you would finally be satisfied. Finally stop taking these risks. But you kept going, it’s like the sky just isn’t high enough for you.”
“Dad, this has never been about the record to me. You know I didn’t even know they had one for that until I got it.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
Light Seeker deflated, he didn’t have an answer for that. He didn’t know why he was driven to keep flying higher. Of the many things he revered his father for teaching him one of them was honor. If the last of his parents stopped supporting his quest, what choice did he have but to honor their will? When he finally answered it came out in a whimper, “You taught me many things, one of them was honor. If you ask me to give up the only dream I’ve ever had… I will.”
The father stood motionless far longer than the son had hoped, with each passing second Light Seeker feared he would have his dreams crushed in this instant. His father turned away and with his back turned and head bowed he finally gave his answer, “Then I won’t ask you to stop… but I will ask you to use that logic and reason I taught you and recalculate the risk-reward equation of what you’re doing.” A moment of silence later and the stallion added, “It smells like dinner’s ready.”
It was the middle of the week and Light Seeker was bored out of his mind. Apprenticing at the Cloudsdale machine shop was a real chore. Despite its name there weren’t even that many machines in the machine shop. All that ever happened was once in a while ponies would bring in a damaged fireworks launcher or fog machine to be repaired, outside of that there didn’t seem to be many other machines in Cloudsdale. Save maybe the occasional pegasus chariot, but that was just two wheals and an axle, fixing those didn’t even count as ‘engineering’ in his mind. While Light could fix up the firework launchers blindfolded, the more complicated stuff seemed to elude his understanding and the apprentice was forced to constantly get his master to show him what he was overlooking.
Today however, the only thing that his master had ready for him was another fireworks launcher and judging from the paint job it too had come from a wonderbolts performance. That seemed to be the case for most fireworks used in Cloudsdale. To make matters worse, it had been days and Light Seeker still had a heavy heart from his conversation with his dad. He hadn’t ordered him to give up on the wing pack but it was clear that his dad was discouraging the idea of continuing. So despite being bored out of his mind only four fireworks sat beside the colt as he stared blankly into space, pointlessly rolling an empty cardboard tube back and forth between his hooves.
“Light, I thought I told you to fix the fireworks launcher, not fix fireworks.” A Stallion’s voice brought Light Seeker’s mind out of its daze.
“Launcher works fine, only two igniters needed to be swapped out and the timing mechanism only needed a small tweak to get back in sync.” Light Seeker reported, doing nothing more then bat the cardboard tube over to the other hoof.
“What’s wrong? I haven’t seen you this depressed before.”
“I’m close to finishing a wing pack.” The colt answered only because his master had asked. Considering that said master had always discouraged his efforts to make rocket wings packs, Light Seeker didn’t see how this conversation could possibly help him out of his sour mood.
“Could’ve fooled me, you usually get this look in your eye and start making fireworks by the ton when that happens.”
“You’re the second pony to tell me that recently. Anyway up until now my dad’s always helped me chase my dream. But last weekend he practically told me to stop.”
“Did he actually tell you to stop?”
“No, but it was clear he wanted me to.”
“Hmm… can’t say I know much about parenting but an old stallion like me does know a thing or two about chasing dreams.”
“You’re middle age at best.”
“Beside the point. Thing is, I chased many dreams in my youth, didn’t really expect to survive the attempts either. They all told me I had a hero complex or something, wanted to get myself killed going something worth while. They were wrong of course, not too far off, but wrong none the less. Dying was never the point, just an acceptable risk to do something worth while. In the end I failed to achieve any of my dreams, but I do know the attempts alone were worth it. I’ve seen too many ponies that saw how impossible their dreams seemed and never even tried, they all carry so much regret in their eyes. So my advice, as long as you’re sure you’re doing what’s right, chase the dream anyway. Just be ready to live with the consequences of the attempt. And good luck.”
“Why are you saying all this? You’ve been as bad as my mom in discouraging my wing pack flights before.”
With a laugh the stallion tried to make light of the situation, “Because you’re a good apprentice and I’ll miss you after you blow yourself up. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a pony in Cloudsdale who cares about these newfangled machines? Now seeing as you’ve made fireworks what do you say we put your work to the test and you show me the launcher is in working order?”
The thought of setting off the colorful explosives did perk Light Seeker up, even with the dismal vote of confidence. He hopped up but caught himself before he fell for an old trap. “I just cleaned it, if we test it you’re cleaning it this time.”
“Deal, now let’s go set off some fireworks you little pyro.”
* * * * * * *
Saturday morning saw Light Seeking flying back to the hanger early. Much to his surprise he spotted an orange filly waiting for him when he arrive. He noticed that there was only a scooter with her, no sign of the wagon or her friends.
Presuming that she had taken the lesson of his earlier question to heart, once he landed, he asked, “Just here to deliver a message?”
“Naw, there’s a harvest at sweet apple acres so Apple Bloom’s busy with that. And Sweetie Belle has her own chores to do. Had nothing better to do then see if I could help you.” Scootaloo answered.
“You any good with a wrench?”
“I’ve been fixing up my scooter with one as long as I can remember,” She declared with a flash of pride on her face.
Light Seeker looked down at the scooter next to the filly. It showed a fair amount of ware and tare. He gave the scooter a nudge, the wheels and axles were perfectly aligned, and they rolled freely without giving the slightest wobble. “Sure, you can help me install the control switches.”
The task was doable, though annoyingly time consuming, alone but with two ponies able to work on both sides of the frame at once the task was completed in short order. Looking over to the open access panel and the wires hanging out of it, Light Seeker knew that the last remaining task to complete the wing pack was similar to the one they had just finished. While he could run the wires through the wings support frame alone, it would take a lot less trial and error to do with a pony on both sides of each section.
“You any good a wiring?” he asked.
“Have you ever wired a kitchen timer to a moving mechanism?” Scootaloo answered with a sly smirk.
“Dare I ask, why would you do that?” Light Seeker responded truly intrigued by the idea, while motioning to the wires that needed to be threaded through the wings.
Scootaloo then told him a story of an unruly apple family cousin, bullying, a parade float, a booby trap, a change of heart and earning a new friend, all while the two ran the wires connecting the control board to the rocket mount points. “…I’m happy it turned out the way it did. But I still think she deserved it, I mean the whole trap relied on Babs stealing our float, how did she not deserved a dunking in the lake? But like I said, I wasn’t about to pass up a chance to prove the crusaders are the good ponies.” She finished.
Perhaps fillies can be reasonable. Light Seeker thought to himself, though merely saying, “I agree, not wanting to be bullied is no excuse to bully others. It sounds like playing the saint worked out okay for you in the end. But in my experience being overly forgiving like that only encouraged them to pick on me more.”
“So how do you deal with them?”
“I ignored the ones I could, and fought the ones I couldn’t.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“I used my dad’s rule ‘Never start a fight, always finish them.’ So basically if they didn’t attack me I left them alone, if they did I made sure we both went home bruised.”
“Sounds like me before I met Apple Bloom.”
“Really? You sounded so restrained in your story just now.” Light Seeker asked, raising an eyebrow in mild surprise.
“Yeah. Before I met Apple Bloom I was teased a lot, so I got in fights to stand up for myself and even Sweetie Belle. But once I met Apple Bloom and we became the cutie mark crusaders my friends stood up for me. Good thing to, they always wanted to settle it with words and I’m no good at fighting with words.”
“Me nether.”
“Really? With those saying you picked up from your dad you sound like those ‘wise old ponies’ in the kung foo comics. Don’t they usually win when they fight with words?” Scootaloo asked, sounding a little surprised.
Light Seeker laughed, “Perhaps you didn’t notice, I’m not a ‘wise old pony kung foo master’, I’m a young, foolish engineer that only understands things that fly or go boom,” he then tried to make a silly face as he finished.
After a moment of giggles Scootaloo asked a serious question, “What now?”
At first Light Seeker was caught off guard by the question. Until he looked around and realized they had just tested the last of the electric igniters. The wing pack was done and a glance out the door told him that it was still morning. As he thought the question over he went through his mental checklist. Wing pack, check. Pressure suit, out of my hooves. Launch ramp… He was sure that the ramp would need reinforcing to accommodate the heavier design of this newest wing pack. But since he had to wait on the suit there was no rush.
Light Seeker had already managed to let one weekend slip by without any real fun, so at that moment all he wanted to do was play. However he had a guest so he couldn’t just leave, but this was a workshop and he didn’t have any toys here, he usually did his playing back home in Cloudsdale. Then he stepped outside and noticed Scootaloo’s scooter. A scooter was a toy, an earth pony toy sure, but still a toy.
There were moments when Light Seeker cursed his curiosity. This was one of those moments. Why did a pegasus filly come here on a scooter? It made since when she was towing her friends around, but… “Scootaloo, can I ask you something?”
“What’s up?”
“What’s with the scooter, wouldn’t it have been faster to fly?”
Scootaloo turned her head down and away, clearly embarrassed, “If I tell you, you have to promise not to laugh.”
Light Seeker was surprised, he was expecting something along the lines of ‘because I wanted to’ not embarrassment, “I promise.”
“I haven’t learned to fly yet.”
A single giggle escaped Light Seeker’s mouth before he slapped himself hard enough to shock himself into keeping his promise.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash is teaching me and I can get a fair ways down the practice field… it’s just more like gliding… I just can’t go up and stuff on my own,” a saddened look appeared on Scootaloo’s face as she defended her flying abilities.
“I’m sorry…” Stupid, stupid Light Seeker, you really blow it now, good ponies are suppose to make others happy, now you’ve gone and made her sad. Along with his inner chastisement he closed his eyes and tried to think of anything he had in the hanger to help him fix his mistake. In his mind’s eye a wire-frame of the hanger and everything in it appeared. Instantly one object lit up, then two more and his mind combined the three into something that had potential. “Would you like to?”
“Like to what?” Scootaloo answered as the confusion overwrought the sadness in her eyes.
“Fly on your own.”
“How would you do that? Rainbow Dash is already teaching me, what do you know about flying that the most awesome flyer in all Equestria doesn’t?”
Light Seeker led her back inside and pointed his hoof at his very first wing pack, “I didn’t say you’d fly like a pegasus, but I could help you fly like an engineer. I didn’t strip it down that much and everything we’d need to get it air worthy again is in this hanger, so I bet we could have it working in a few hours.”
An adventurous grin graced the filly’s face, “Let’s do it.”
* * * * * * *
A few hours and splitting the lunch in Light Seeker’s saddlebag later, and the two foals stepped back to admire their second collaboration of the day. With it’s newly remade frame, as it turned out Light had been even smaller than Scootaloo when he first made it, the restored wing pack doubled the filly’s wingspan.
Scootaloo looked at the rocket tube on the end of each wing, tilted her head a little and asked, “Isn’t there suppose to be something in the rockets?”
“Yeah, propellant,” Light Seeker said, as he walked over to a metal case and opened the lid to reveal a small cache of fireworks.
“Are those fireworks? Cool! Wait? How do fireworks help us?”
“Easy,” Light ripped the top cone off one of the fire works, tipped the wing pack nose down and drained the propellant from the firework tube into the rocket casing on the wing pack. Once his mouth was free he finished, “Fireworks are just rockets with a small charge at the top.”
Once the rockets were loaded Light Seeker salvaged the harness off his most recent failed wing pack and put it on. Then he took a high strength cable and used it to tether himself to the wing pack.
“What are you doing that for?” Scootaloo asked.
“If you didn’t notice all the grass outside, we’d start a fire if we tried to launch you from the ground. So I’m going to tow you high enough off the ground before we fire the rockets. So if you’re ready, suit up.” Light Seeker motioned to the harness in the restored wing pack.
A few moments later Light was towing Scootaloo skyward. While the filly was also flapping her wings hard, he could feel that she was only canceling out most of her weight at best, leaving him to carry himself, the wing pack and the remainder of her weight.
Looking down he figured they had a good thousand feet, figuring that to be more than enough fall time for Scootaloo to do what she needed to get the rocket pack up to speed and flying he addressed her, “Okay here’s how we’re going to do this. You have the quick release side of the tether so you’ll have to release it from your end, then you flip the switch to light the rockets.”
“Light, I come down hard even when I’m not weighed down. How do I land with this thing strapped to my back?”
“Just aim for a cloud, or if all else fails a lake to splash down in.” Truth was he hadn’t really thought about how she was to land as he had always been able to just fly normally with his first wing pack on. He hoped his improvised plan was good enough.
“Okay, no problem.” Scootaloo answered. Apparently she thought the plan was doable, although her voice sounded a little shaky.
A moment of pause later and Light Seeker began to wonder what she was waiting for. “Fire when ready,” he said, just incase she was waiting for permission from him.
Scootaloo flipped the switch and the twin rockets of the wing pack flared to life. “Wooo Hooo!” she shouted to the wind.
“Tether! Release the tether!” Light Seeker shouted, only to realize that if he could hardly hear himself over the roar of the wind and rockets, the filly dragging him through the sky had no real chance of hearing him. He grabbed the tether line and pulled as hard as he could, but he couldn’t pull hard enough to get the needed slack to get the tether off the hook.
Accepting that the thrust of the rockets was too strong to fight, Light Seeker saw no choice but to wait out Scootaloo’s mistake and let his mind wander. No big deal right? The rockets have what, fifty seconds of burn time tops? Wow, it’s kinda hot back here. Did they always burn this hot? Why does it feel like we’re going so fast? I don’t remember my first wing pack being this fast. He took note that Scootaloo was flapping her wings but knew there was no way that would account for the extra speed. Gravity! I always fired them pointed up, but she’s just flying sideways so the rockets aren’t fighting gravity. Wait was that Canterlot? A sudden double take and Light Seeker confirmed that they had indeed passed the mountainside-city.
Were did that filly think she was going? Why hadn’t she turned around? Didn’t she realize that if she kept flying straight the flight wouldn’t end anywhere near where they started? Those thoughts and more filled Light Seeker’s mind until he heard what he was waiting for. The rockets burned out, with the last of their fuel gone Light scanned the area and realized that Cloudsdale was in fact the closest cloud around.
“Keep going, give it everything you got!” He shouted to Scootaloo, as he pumped his wings like mad and overtook her.
The rockets had burned out a few miles short of Cloudsdale and once they did the speed they had given began to bleed off. But with extraordinary effort and five minutes of hard flying the two young pegasi managed to make the remainder of the distance. Though his wings were crying out for rest, Light Seeker got one final surge out of his wings and pulled them up just enough to grab onto the edge of the lowest cloud. With his hooves able to help, he clawed his way up the side and soon felt the tension on the tether let up as Scootaloo got enough of a hold to do the same. Together they scrambled up to firmer cloud before they collapsed in exhaustion.
Nothing about that flight had gone as planed and now they were lying on their backs, hot, sweaty, tired, with every muscle in their wings crying out for rest, and for some reason the two young pegasi couldn’t help but laugh.
When the fits of laughter faded Scootaloo was the first to speak, “That was soo much fun! Oh… wait, I was suppose to fly solo huh?” she blushed upon realizing her mistake.
“Yes, I expected you to circle around and come down near Ponyville, not drag me across the sky shooting for Cloudsdale. Which begs the question, what now?” Light Seeker asked, though he could improvise just fine on his own he wasn’t sure what to do when ‘hanging out’ with somepony.
“Can we look around? When Rainbow Dash brings me here it’s always just to use the practice field, I’d love to see what else is here.”
Look around huh? That sounded easy enough to Light Seeker, “Not sure what there is that would be interesting, but sure.” Maybe it was just because he lived here that he hadn’t really thought of what looked cool enough to show off. He quickly put together a mental list of the places that had impressed him at some point in time.
Light reached up to release the tether from the rocket pack, intending to just wrap it around himself for now, but an orange hoof stopped him. “Can, we leave that on for now?” Scootaloo sounded slightly worried as she asked.
“Okay… Why?” Light Seeker asked truly confused as to why she’d want to remain tethered to him.
“It’s just, that I’ve never been here without Rainbow Dash before. And well, I know she’d catch me if I fell. And well…” Scootaloo seemed hesitant to finish what she was saying, so Light Seeker did it for her.
“I’m no Rainbow Dash, fair enough.” Light Seeker saw no reason not to humor her request, even though he was fairly certain that her concerns were unfounded, but if it made her feel safer why not? So he left the tether be and led the way into Cloudsdale.
* * * * * * *
Scootaloo looked out over the edge of the cloud-bridge and down into the prismatic fluid flowing beneath. It was the fourth place Light Seeker had shown her, and so far the tour seemed to consist of rainbow fountains and streams surrounded by fancy cloud building, like this bridge. “This looks cool,” then with a sigh she added, “But sightseeing just isn’t as fun without the wind in your mane and a scooter under your hooves. Is there anything fun to do around here?”
Light Seeker pondered the question for a moment then answered, “I suppose we could go to one of the city parks and throw a ball around, or maybe find somepony to play team cloud ball with, or even build a cloud fort and play siege.”
“Cloud ball? What’s that?” the filly’s eyes seemed to light up at the name of an unknown game.
“Hmm… I think there’s an earth pony game like it called tennis. Same basic idea, the playing field is cut in half and you have to stay on your side of the field while trying to get the ball past your opponent’s side. Usually it’s played horizontally with both sides flying, but I’ve seen it played vertically when one side has a weak flyer. So if we could find somepony willing to play against us, we can just call ground team.” Light Seeker explained.
Scootaloo enthusiastically supported the idea, even after Light Seeker warned her he wasn’t very good at it, so he led her to the nearest park. Much to the colt’s surprise it didn’t prove hard at all to find a couple of ponies their age willing to play against a team self-handicapped by being tethered together.
* * * * * * *
“You seem awful happy considering we got clobbered seven games to two.” Light Seeker observed as they walked away from the park. He also took notice that the sun was getting low on the horizon.
“I’ve always lived in Ponyville so I’ve never had the chance to play pegasus games like that before.” Scootaloo answered practically beaming.
“How late can you stay up?” Light asked, pointing to the growing shadows coming off a nearby cloud building.
“Latter then you,” she answered as if issuing a dare.
“I’m sure your folks won’t be happy if you come home super late, so we should probably get you back to Ponyville.”
“Fine, how? It’s kinda far to walk,” Scootaloo sighed.
“I guess we’ll just have to get…” Light seeker paused mid-thought before a grin appeared, “Actually, we might not need help, I have plenty of fireworks at home we can refuel the wing pack with.”
“Light, why do you have fireworks stashed everywhere?”
“Hmm? Oh I make them when I’m bored.”
“You can make your own fireworks? That’s so cool! That must be so nice to be able to put on a fireworks show whenever you want.”
“If you don’t mind visiting the Cloudsdale burn treatment center every time you make a mistake. Or being teased with names like pyro or firebug all the time.” Light Seeker pointed out the downsides of his favored hobby.
“I’ll take pyro over dodo any day.” Scootaloo gave a weak laugh.
He couldn’t argue with that so he showed her the way to his place and the two foals made idle chat off and on as they went.
* * * * * * *
Light Seeker walked in the front door of his home, followed closely by Scootaloo. Across the living room his father looked up from his newspaper just long enough to take note of his son, the harness he had on, a tether, and the orange filly in a wing pack on the other end of said tether. “You know that’s not what they mean when they say ‘getting hitched’ right?” The stallion commented, before returning his attention to the paper.
“What? No! it’s…” Light Seeker stumbled over his thoughts as he realized what his father’s joke meant. All the while he and Scootaloo blushed, “Oh forget it! Come on Scootaloo let’s just refuel those rockets and get out of here before I have to die of embarrassment.”
“And send your friend home without dinner this late in the afternoon? Not on my watch young colt.” The voice drew everyponies attention to the kitchen doorway, where the speaker was standing.
“Mom! She’s from Ponyville and we weren’t even planning on coming to Cloudsdale, there’s no way she has permission to eat dinner here.” Light Seeker pleaded for a little common sense.
“Actually, I was just planing on making my own dinner when I got home, nopony would notice if I ate here instead.” Scootaloo responded, ending the stare down between mother and colt.
“Perfect! I’ll do what I can to speed dinner along so you can get her home before sunset. Now you two go get washed up, it won’t take long,” the mare said, as she returned to the kitchen. Judging from the aroma of pasta she had already started dinner even before they had arrived.
As Light Seeker led the way to the bathroom to wash up he couldn’t help but ask, “You cook?”
“No, throwing a few things between two pieces of bread and calling it a sandwich isn’t what I’d call cooking. That would be like calling throwing milk and cereal in a bowl cooking.” Scootaloo paused for a moment and looked around quizzically. “Okay… where’s the faucet?”
Light Seeker looked above the sink to the small gray cloud hovering over a funnel, everything seemed to be in order to him. Then it dawned on him that his new friend was used to homes on the ground with water pipes and such. “Oh right.” He said, as he flew up next to the small rain cloud above the sink. “You may want to stand back, I tend to bring lightning down on my head as often as I do rain.”
Scootaloo stepped back into doorway to the hall, Light Seeker pulled his hoof back and prayed. Please be rain, please be rain, please be rain. Then he closed his eyes and gave the small dark puff of cloud a jab. The sound of rain pouring though the funnel greeted his ears so he opened his eyes and smiled. Ha! First try even! He cheered in his head. As if refusing to be completely tamed by the young pegasus a weak bolt of lightning arched into his hoof and sent him tumbling to the floor.
“You okay?” A shout came from the living room.
“I’m fine dad, we’re fine!” Light called back, “Owww… oh, it’s safe now, go ahead, I… I think I’ll just lay here for a sec before I wash up,” He adding quietly to Scootaloo, as he lay there trying to rub the pain away.
Once washed up, the two young pegasi helped set the table for dinner and were promptly severed pasta. Though it seemed Light Seeker’s mother had skipped making a sauce in favor of sprinkling herbs, spices and grated cheese over the noodles as a quicker alternative. During dinner Light Seeker’s parents took the time to volunteer stories of his life, that he’d rather not be told, and ask Scootaloo a myriad of questions. Oddly enough by dinner’s end the colt figured he’d learned more about Rainbow Dash than he had Scootaloo, as she seemed to like speaking of the record holding mare more than herself.
With dinner out of the way the two foals proceeded to Light Seeker’s room where he set about dismantling some of his fireworks to refuel the rockets on the wing pack. With the rocket tubes refueled and the igniters reset Light took one last look over the rocket wing pack to make sure everything was as it should be. “Okay the wing pack’s hot, don’t hit the switch by mistake.”
Scootaloo nodded, and looked longingly at the remaining fireworks in the launcher, “I guess we should get going then. Huh?”
For once the look in Scootaloo’s eyes wasn’t lost on Light Seeker. He too looked to the remaining fireworks, “You know, it only took us something like five minutes to get here. It won’t be as cool in the daylight like this but we could getaway with a quick fireworks show and still have time to get back to Ponyville before sunset.”
A grin and grabbing the handle opposite Light Seeker was all the response she gave and that was all the colt needed to take the other end of the launcher and guide her to the roof to set it up. With the set up complete he made one last check to ensure the skies above them were clear of pegasi. Then he lifted the guard panel and gestured to the small button behind it, “Would you care to do the honors?”
Scootaloo pushed the button without hesitation and the two watched as the first firework shot out of its tube in the launcher, exploding seconds latter high over head. As expected the light of evening was still strong enough to dull the colors of the fireworks, though that did little to dull the joy the two felt watching them anyway.
Light Seeker knew the show would only last a few minutes before the launcher fired the last of the colorful rockets, he’d even just set the delay timers himself. That made this seem to be the last chance of the day to satisfy his curiosity. And a perfectly good moment to curse his curiosity, he didn’t want to risk hurting the filly’s feelings but he asked anyway, “Scootaloo, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“The day we first met, why were you and your friends so insistent on helping me? Was it just because we’re all black flanks?”
“Hmm, for Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle I’d bet it’s just about the cutie mark, we’ve been trying so long to get our own, I think they really want to help somepony earn one and you seem to know what you need to do to earn yours.”
“What about you? You didn’t seem that interested until you insisted I keep chasing an impossible dream.”
“That’s just it. I want to be an awesome pegasus daredevil just like Rainbow Dash someday. You’ve seen how weak of a flyer I am. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told my dream is impossible. That’s why you have to make you’re dream come true. I have to know it’s possible to make dreams like that come true if you just work hard enough… I have to.”
Light Seeker looked away from the fireworks and found Scootaloo was staring at him, with a determination that had few rivals burning in her eyes. He knew the filly before him was a pony determined to forge her own destiny no matter what fate had in store for her. Much as he had been when he first set out making his wing packs. “With determination like that you will be an awesome daredevil someday, I can promise you that.” He said.
A volley of rockets from the launch announced the end of the display as the last twenty fireworks went off within two seconds. When the last firework exploded a stallion’s voice distracted the two foals, “Shouldn’t you have left by now? The sun’s practically touching the horizon and it’s dangerous to fly at night. Especially a night like tonight.”
“Don’t worry dad, with the wing pack it’ll only take five minutes or so to get her back to Ponyville.”
“And that’s about how long it will take the sun to set.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll just sleep at the workshop.”
“Fine, now get going,” the father said, as he pushed the colt toward the edge of the roof.
* * * * * * *
With in moments Light Seeker and Scootaloo were standing at the south edge of Cloudsdale, the orange filly pointed at her hometown. Light backed up until there wasn’t any slack left on the tether. Signaled by a nod Scootaloo fired the rockets and the two were off.
A miscalculation in Light Seeker’s plan made itself known on the return trip. It had indeed taken about six minutes to return, but that was to the skies above his workshop, and while it only took a few extra minutes to reach Ponyville that was enough time for the sun to finish setting and dusk to start growing truly dark.
They had landed somewhere in the north end of Ponyville and while Light Seeker would have been lost Scootaloo seemed content with parting ways here, with one caveat, “Light, I’m going to need a favor from you. My scooter is still at your workshop, can you bring it back into town some time tomorrow? I really don’t like being without it.”
“Sure I’ll do that first thing in the morning. Umm, just, where am I bringing it?”
“The crusaders’ clubhouse is at sweet apple acres, big apple farm on the south end of town, you can’t miss it,” Scootaloo said, as she released the last of the straps and freed herself from the wing pack.
“Sure thing, good night and sorry if you get in trouble for coming home so late!” Light Seeker called out as he took to the air, still hauling the now empty wing pack with his harness and tether.
While starting at Cloudsdale had given them the advantage of sacrificing altitude for speed and thus distance the longer than expected flight had still left Light Seeker feeling almost as tired as their final sprint to Cloudsdale. He was in no shape to lug the wing pack all the way back to the workshop. Though it occurred to him that if he was coming into town to being Scootaloo’s scooter back he could just pick up the wing pack on his way back out tomorrow. It was a perfect plan, too simple to fail, he just needed a place to stash the wing pack for the night out of everypony’s way.
The lights were coming on as Light Seeker scanned the town for someplace to hide the wing pack, then he spotted one place he knew he could find again, Rarity’s boutique. He zipped over to a tree next to the boutique and wedged the wing pack firmly in its branches, took off his own harness and took back to the skies. A moment of panic set in when it took him a full five seconds just to find north again in the growing darkness.
* * * * * * *
Dang just another hill. Light Seeker thought to himself as he buzzed yet another shadow he thought might be his workshop. Night was in full force now and as he pulled up from his dive he noticed that not only had the ground lost all since of color, it now became a field of infinite darkness below him. He looked back to the lights of Ponyville that seemed to be the only marker of were the ground was.
The young pegasus certainly didn’t want to sleep out in the open but he couldn’t find the hanger so what other choices did he have? He pondered the idea of following the lights back to Ponyville but the idea of sleeping in the streets wasn’t appealing either. Why was it so dark? Shouldn’t the light of the moon be enough to see? A glance at the moon answered the riddle. The moon was little more than a sliver of a crescent moon. Light Seeker recalled his father’s warning ‘a night like tonight’ this was exactly what his dad had been worried about.
The colt’s eyes fell to the north, Cloudsdale glowed like a gray ghost amid the sea of darkness that the land had become. Between it’s own lights and the fact that it was a city if clouds, even the darkness of this night couldn’t hide it from view. With a heavy sigh Light Seeker flew towards the cloud city and his home, knowing full well that he was going to get an ear full for flying at night when he got back.
The night had gone exactly as Light Seeker feared. His parents were surprised when he came home a good hour after sunset. And once he explained how it had gotten too dark to find the hanger like he planed, they lectured him on the dangers of flying at night as if he somehow didn’t just scare himself half to death mere minutes earlier flying at night.
The morning had come too soon for Light Seeker’s tastes as he was still lying in bed well after the sun had come up, still pondering the night before. Now that the scary part of making his first true night flight was over, he was free to ponder what he had overlooked when actually flying home. Like how the sky had opened up into a field of stars and that field was the only thing he could really see. The more he thought about it the more he realized that the day did the same thing as the night. Day revealed the ground but turned the sky into an empty blue void, while night revealed the sky while turning the ground into an empty black void. No, that didn’t seem right. On the nights when the moon was brighter the night didn’t hide the ground from sight either. He promised himself that he’d have to sneak out for a night flight some night on a full moon to see the world when both the sky and ground could be seen at once, when neither was truly veiled from ones eyes.
Then the thought that he had promised Scootaloo that he would bring her scooter into town first thing in the morning crossed his mind. And he meant to keep that promise, after all he had yet to do a ‘first thing’ this morning. A growl from his stomach protested. Okay second thing in the morning, surely she didn’t expect him to skip breakfast despite his choice of words.
Urged on to fulfil his promise Light Seeker rolled out of bed and let himself fall to the floor. The clouds of the floor were only slightly firmer than ones of his bed and equally inviting him to go back to sleep. Resisting the idea he crawled to his hooves and headed to the kitchen to find something to eat.
A cold bowl of cereal was enough to help wake him up, though he was still toying with the idea of blitzing though his morning to do list then finding the nearest cloud to take a nap on when his father dropped a letter beside his bowl. Looking down at it Light Seeker saw it was from the dive shop that made his first pressure suit. He also noticed the postmark was dated almost a week and a half ago, it couldn’t possibly have arrived recently.
Seeing the questioning look on his son’s face the stallion answered, “Seems your mother took the liberty of hiding it in our closet. Guess she figured you couldn’t try again if you never got your suit fixed.”
“And you?”
“You’re my son so, I’m betting that means you can be just as stubborn as me when you get an idea stuck in your head. So I figure helping you is the best way to minimize the risks that I think you’re underestimating.” His father’s tone made it clear his dad still thought he was being too reckless.
Light Seeker forced a smile, “Thanks dad.”
Light then turned his attention to the letter. In all honesty he had completely forgotten about the Fillydelphia dive shop. The colt tore into the letter wondering why they would be sending him a letter. As he skimmed the text he remembered that he had sent them a letter asking for an estimated cost of revising the pressure suit to be airtight, not just watertight. His eyes widened as he read the number they gave him. It was almost as much as making the suit had been in the first place. Then the nagging feeling from a week ago came back with a vengeance. Rarity! He remembered. He had spoken with her for half a day and somehow the topic of the price of having her make the new suit never came up!
Light Seeker gulped down the last of the milk in his bowl and bolted for his room. He tossed on his saddlebags, threw the pouch with the few bits he had to his name in them and bolted out the door into the streets of Cloudsdale with the speed of a living rocket.
The flight to Ponyville was too long to stay panicked and that allowed Light to calm his mind and make a basic plan, first he’d keep his word to Scootaloo, swing by the hanger, grab her scooter and take it into town. Then he’d talk to Rarity and finally retrieve his wing pack from her tree and take it back out to the hanger. As calming as it was to have a simple plan the colt’s mind kept coming back to Rarity’s boutique. All the dresses in there had looked so fancy and had loads of gemstone embroidery in them. She was probably used to clients that could pay anything at the drop of a hat. Surely, she wouldn’t think a mere colt of his age could pay a small fortune, but the fact that price hadn’t come up didn’t bode well for him in his mind.
There by his hanger door was a scooter with a helmet hanging off its handlebars. Light swooped down and snagged them with his front legs as he continued his high-speed trek to Ponyville. Now he pondered where he was supposed to drop these off. Recalling something about a clubhouse and an apple farm he scanned the area. He didn’t have to look long to notice the fields of apple trees south of town. However, it took a little longer to spot the one with a clubhouse in it.
Light Seeker landed on the balcony and looked inside. Nopony was here, but he did spot one corner had several arts and crafts depicting a sky blue pegasus with a prismatic mane that matched every description he had heard of Rainbow Dash. I bet that’s Scootaloo’s hoofwork. He thought to himself as he placed the scooter and helmet next to the crafts.
With the scooter delivered the colt jumped back into the air and headed back into town, heading to the overly fancy boutique and the task that he dreaded the most. Hopefully Rarity wouldn’t be too mad that he couldn’t pay her right away. Hopefully with what he had on him she would see that he would be able to pay her eventually and just to hold on to the suit until he could pay her in full.
Light Seeker glanced at a nearby clock tower, it was a little past 9am, that didn’t seem too early for a shop to be open. And yet when he landed he must have sat there for a good five minutes before he worked up the courage to knock on the door.
“Come in.” The voice was definitely that of Rarity, so the young pegasus did as requested. Where he was immediately besieged with the mare’s seemingly prepared speech for the occasion, “Oh Light darling, your timing is perfect, I was just about to go looking for Sweetie Belle to have her and her friends go find you. It is finished,” she motioned as if speaking about an art piece.
“About that…” he began only to be cut off.
“Now first thing you should know is, when I realized that your resin treatment would make most any cloth airtight, and after hearing about the nature of your project form Sweetie Belle and friends I realized you’d need a stronger base fabric. So I took the liberty of using pegasus cloth as the base fabric. No stronger fabric in all the world them pegasus cloth after all, darling.”
“I can’t afford it!” Light Seeker blurted out seeing an opening to speak.
“On no don’t worry about it, I changed the fabric, and with friends like yours and mine it was no trouble at all. Though I must admit I was wondering where Scootaloo was getting all the pegasus hair at first. Took Zecora four days to figure out why that filly kept needing a potion to re-grow her mane and tail. In the end I’d say a good eighty-percent of your suit is made from Scootaloo’s hair alone, although she also got quite the lecture about the risks of overdosing on magic potions. But she learned something from it, and after her contribution it wasn’t that hard for Pinkie Pie to find enough pegasi around town willing to get a more reasonable trim for the rest of the fabric. Speaking of Scootaloo, she was such a dear testing the suit too. Took me three revisions to finally get rid of all the leaks.”
“Three? How…” Light began but was promptly cut off.
“How? Oh she put the suit on, turned on the air and then we threw some weights on her back to counter to buoyancy so she’d sink to the bottom of the pool, then her friends marked all the spots where air bubbles came out. Simple really. Oh you should also know I took the liberty of bleaching that resin so it came out white, so much easier to work with than that dreadful shade of gray it was before.”
“About that…”
“Yes, yes darling I know, function over form, doesn’t worry I didn’t forget, although I did take the liberty of staining the metal parts to an absolutely lovely shade of cyan, so now the suit matches your natural colors quite nicely, I’m sure you’re going to love it.” Rarity had been leading Light Seeker to an upper room where she flung open the door before them as she finished speaking.
He had to admit Rarity was right, the new suit did look much better than the old gray one back at the hanger. Although now that he stood next to it the slight blue tint of his otherwise white fur could be noticed. Still it was a close enough match to his natural colors that the colt couldn’t help but think it looked cool. Then he spotted the helmet hanging next to it. It was white with some sky blue detailing depicting a lightning bolt on the side. It also had fins that looked like they were to accommodate a pony’s ears in a folded back position.
Seeing her young customer had taken notice of the helmet Rarity remarked on it, “Ah yes I may have taken a little liberty with the helmet design too. Though I did consult Rainbow Dash on the matter and she assured me that this design would be sufficiently aerodynamic for high speed flight.”
It looked sleek enough that Light Seeker didn’t doubt the aerodynamics of it. Then came that sinking feeling, as nice as seeing the suit in all its glory was it didn’t change the fact that he didn’t have anywhere near enough bits to pay for it, at least not at the moment. Seeing as the mare had seemed to miss the point of his earlier confession the young pegasus simply took the coin pouch out of his saddlebag and set it down before the unicorn. “This is all I have, but I have an apprentice job so I can pay the rest eventually. How much do I still owe you?”
This time Rarity seemed to understand what he meant. A blue glow surrounded her horn and the coin pouch. It opened and the few gold and silver coins levitated out. She hardly paid the coins any mind as she set them on a nearby dresser, focusing instead on returning the empty pouch the colt’s saddlebags. “This will do.” Was all she said.
“Miss Rarity, I know that there’s no way that can cover the cost of materials and definitely not profit, this is a business deal after all.”
“Your grasp of value is advanced for your age darling, but value is a subjective thing you see. My sister and her friends have been so caught up in this little project of yours that they’ve managed to stay out of trouble for a full week! A full week! Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
“Apparently not,” Light Seeker muttered, extremely confused. Judging from the unicorn’s overly dramatic pose, he was sure she had just been talking about somepony saving the world, but his ears told him that she had said that three fillies stayed out of trouble for a week. And he was fairly sure that young ponies could do that on a regular basis. Bringing his mind back on track, he renewed his complaint, “It’s nice of you to offer the suit for so little but I really don’t like owing anypony favors.”
“Then, don’t darling, a gift generously given does not expect repayment.” Rarity’s magic enveloped the suit and helmet and brought them near the young pegasus. The look that appeared in the unicorn’s eye was both threatening and playful. It was clear to Light Seeker that he was leaving the boutique with the suit and the only question was if he was going to don the suit willingly or be forced into it by the mare’s magic.
With a sigh Light conceded, “Fine.” Past experience with the first suit ensured he knew this suit wouldn’t fold enough to fit in the saddlebag, and having made it, Rarity clearly knew the same. He let her help him put on the suit, she also draped his saddlebags over the top and showed him how to open the visor on the helmet so he wouldn’t need to turn on the air tanks just to make a quick trip.
Once Light Seeker was outside he flew up to the tree with the wing pack he had hidden there the night before. He took particular notice of how the stiffness of the suit made flapping his wings harder, just as the first one had done. But it wasn’t enough to stop him from taking the harness in his hooves and pulling the wing pack into the sky.
With the wing pack and suit safely stored away at the hanger Light Seeker turned his head to the east, to the nearby mountains. Focusing his eyes on a spot about three fourths of the way up, where he knew an abandoned mine was, and more importantly the launch ramp he had made from track parts he had salvaged. He figured the ramp would need to be reinforced if it was going to hold up to the strain of this next launch. And while Rarity might have considered their accounts settled Light didn’t, and he knew one way he could try to make it up to her so he took off not to the east, but south, he needed to find the crusaders.
With the crusaders’ help it had only taken a few days to reinforce the launch ramp. Although Light Seeker was truly curious as to where they had gotten fresh lumber on such short notice and no apparent cost, as an exercise in self-restraint he refrained from asking. And while a half-week’s earning might not have been enough to buy work supplies it was enough to get his new friends a treat as a thank you for the help.
It was saturday morning and Light Seeker sat, staring out over the rolling hills below the launch ramp. They had waited until the weekend for the launch for two reasons. First so they all had the morning free. And second it was the first day with a clear sky scheduled all day since they finished reinforcing the ramp.
“It’s ready.” The voice of a mare declared. That drew Light’s attention to the pegasus with the blue-green coat and tri-colored mane, consisting of red, green and blue, and to a lesser extent the large telescope next to her.
“Thank you Aunt Iris.” Light Seeker said, then turned to the three fillies also with him, “And thank you too. It would’ve been a real pain in the flank to haul the wing pack up here alone.” He gave a bow of respect to his friends. With all the worrying about the extra weight on the ramp it had completely slipped his mind that his dad wouldn’t be helping pull the cart with the wing pack up the mountain this time, but with the help of the crusaders that oversight turned out to be a non-issue.
“I’m surprised my brother’s not here. Especially since he’s the one that told me you were planning on launching today. Is he not coming?” The only adult present on the mountainside asked.
“Life happens, said he was extra busy today and couldn’t make it.” And he was probably lying about it. The colt added in his mind, knowing his mother had stopped watching his wing pack flights as a form of protest against them, and suspecting his father was now doing the same.
It saddened Light Seeker to think he had lost his dad’s support. A part of him knew his father was right, the higher he flew the greater the odds he’d run into an unknown variable that would mess up his plans for a safe flight. Then his eyes fell on Scootaloo and a smile returned before anypony had seen it vanish. He knew somepony was counting on him and that gave him far more drive than his father's mere support ever did.
The colt approached the modified mine cart that would serve as the launch vehicle for his wing pack. The walls of the cart had been cut away leaving only the base, the rocket tubes for the initial acceleration, and a simple frame to support and brace the wing pack now resting on it. The rocket motors were all in place, both on the cart and the wing pack. He had finished prepping them the day before, though he had waited until mere moments ago to set the igniters in place.
Slipping underneath the wing pack Light Seeker stood up and pressed his back against the harness until he heard the click of the latching mechanism on the top of the air tanks lock the pressure suit to the wing pack. Everything was ready, but he felt he wasn’t. Scootaloo had placed her trust in him and he was determined to come through for her. But the realist in him knew there was a real possibility that this flight could end just like his last one. He could go up, fly higher then before and still not find what was driving him to do so, and come down just as blank flanked as before. He had to inspire her no matter the outcome, and as much as he hated speeches this seemed the right time for one.
Light turned to his friends and aunt, though his words were directed solely at his friends. “Crusaders, you’ve helped me more then you know, and this flight is only taking place because of that help. Thank you. And win lose or draw, I think we’ve come far enough to see that if you work your tail off you can make amazing things happen.” His eyes focused on Scootaloo and he added, “Chase your dreams. As you’ve helped me chase mine.”
With that Light Seeker closed his helmet’s visor and locked it shut. A few deep breaths and he could taste the increasingly stale air, confirming that the seals were airtight. He reached back, turned on the air tanks and felt the cold, tasteless air from the air tanks. It wasn’t the fresh mountain air beyond the visor, but it would be breathable. The colt then closed the casing. (Instead of one large air tank Rarity had used several smaller ones inside a casing to streamline the system on his back.) Now everything was ready. He flipped the switch on the modified mine cart.
The rocket motors on the mine cart all flared to life and the makeshift launch vehicle shot down the track with all due haste. As Light Seeker reached the bottom of the ramp he could feel the track groan under the force of the passing launch vehicle. Once the ramp changed the downward momentum into an upward one Light spread his wings and lifted his legs into a flight form. He had less then a second to do so before reaching the end of the track and his next task. The moment the cart left the launch track he flipped a switch on wing pack’s frame before him, and the first set of rockets lit up just as the mine cart’s rocket motors burned out.
Light Seeker and his wing pack shot off, upward while the mine cart fell to its doom. A brief moment of concern passed though the colt’s mind as he worried if anypony was in the crash zone. Once he had perfected the burn time of the rocket cart’s rockets to match the time they took on the launch track he had noticed that they all crashed in more or less the same place. However he wasn’t sure anypony would take the ‘watch for falling rocket propelled mine carts’ sign he had put in the crash zone seriously. Though he figured that the crash zone had the same protection as his hanger, it was in the middle of nowhere so nopony had any reason to be out this way, save him and his friends.
He shook his head. Now was not the time to let his mind wander he had a mission he needed to focus on. Light figured it had been about a minute since takeoff so he flipped the next switch and the second set of rockets came to life. The colt frowned as he counted off eight seconds of overlap before the first set of rockets burned out. His timing was way off.
When the time came for the third set Light Seeker only counted off two seconds of overlap, better but still not what he wanted. By the fourth set he had found his rhythm again, only counting off a half second of overlap. At the sixth set a smile graced his face. His previous wing pack only had five sets of rockets, so it stood to reason that he would pass his pervious altitude record with this set.
By the seventh set of rocket motors something felt off. Was the sky getting darker? It should have been early morning, it had to be a trick of the light or something. By the eighth set there was no denying that the sky was getting darker, Light Seeker even glanced around to see the sky below him was still as blue as always but the sky before him was dark as dusk. This both concerned and excited the colt. He hadn’t expected the sky to change color like this and that made this one of those unforeseen variables. On the upside he hadn’t expect this and that meant there was something truly different about this flight that he hadn’t seen on any of his past flights. Maybe this was a sign that he what he was looking for was up here after all.
When he lit the ninth set Light Seeker was sure he could see the stars coming out. There was no way he’d been up here all day so that begged the question, was it always night this high up? Did day only exist near the ground?
About two thirds of the way through the ninth set’s burn Light Seeker felt ‘it’. His wings told him that all of a sudden the only resistance was coming from the stiffness of the pressure suit. He tested the feeling by twisting his wings a little, then more, then full on deflection, thin air or not he should’ve been sending himself into a wild spin with his wings at these angles but he was still flying straight as could be. He had expected the air to keep getting thinner the higher he went but he hadn’t expected it to end. The sky had a limit. And he had passed it.
As powerful as that revelation was the one that came moments later was even stronger. As he was distracted by the feelings in his wings Light Seeker’s eyes adapted to the darkness that now surrounded him and that’s when he saw ‘it’. The darkness had become a sea of stars, and not just stars but colorful clouds of reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and purples. Nebulas, stellar clouds that the colt was sure he’d been told could only be seen with a telescope. Yet the heavens stood fully displayed before him, a mere pegasus foal, looking with nothing to aid his eyes, and it was a sight unlike any he had imagined. This was the realm of the stars. It’s like the greatest fireworks finally ever, frozen in time. He thought to himself.
Two powerful revelations had come to Light Seeker and yet the moment refused to cease amazing him. Once more he felt something. He had been so distracted staring out at the heavens before him that he hadn’t noticed the ninth set of rockets had burned out several minutes ago. It was a feeling that any pegasus knew, even earth ponies and unicorns who rode a decent roller coaster could claim knowledge of this feeling. That feeling at the arch of an ascent, that briefest of moments between when you ran out upward momentum and when gravity yanked you back down when the body felt weightless. Yet this moment wasn’t fading, the colt realized he had been feeling it ever since the rockets stopped providing thrust and yet gravity didn’t seem to be in any hurry to yank him back down.
Down, the thought made Light Seeker look down at the world below him. The world consumed his view and yet it seemed small. He was so high up that even his pegasus eyes couldn’t tell the difference between rolling hills and grassy plains. Both were just green. He couldn’t even tell where the cities were from this high. And yet seeing all of Equestria and the oceans beyond both coasts at once held a special-ness all its own even without being able to see the details he knew were down there.
Then something else caught his eye. Just beyond the horizon of the world Light Seeker spotted the moon. Once more the time of day came to mind, it was early morning and yet he could see a sliver of the moon. A glance at the shadows the sun was painting on the wing pack confirmed he was right to think it was still early morning. Curiosity got the better of the colt as he glanced to the light’s source. He instantly regretted the decision as he shut his eyes and looked away from the sun. In the back on his mind a memory of a flight lesson he’d received from his father played itself as if to scold him.
“Ideally you never want to look at the sun. But every now and then you’ll find yourself having to fly east or west at sunrise or sunset. Flying blind is an act of suicide so you can’t just look away, the trick is to look at the mountains or some other point on the horizon near the sun and use that to keep yourself on course instead. Oh and if you know you’ll be flying into the sun beforehoof take some sunglasses with you, it’s not much but they do help.”
Light Seeker opened his eyes and even looking at the inside of his helmet he could tell he was snow-blinded as everything had been reduced to shadows. Beyond the visor he could only see the brighter stars now. His flight lesson had taught him not to look at the sun, but even back then he looked anyway. So he was no stranger to the sudden snow-blindness that came from the mistake. He also was no stranger to a way to fix it. He closed his eyes again and admired the red circle in the center of his vision. The gift the sun burned into his eyes, he waited and soon the circle begun to shrink, leaving a green one in its wake. The green circle too, gave way leaving a blue one in the middle of the darkness of inside of his eyelids. Finally the blue circle gave way leaving only more darkness.
Light Seeker opened his eyes once more and found the sea of stars had returned. As had the nebulas, however, the colors of the celestial clouds were dulled some. Light knew that even his little trick couldn’t completely cure snow-blindness and it would probably take all day before his eyes fully healed. With a heavy sigh he lamented the diminished splendor of the celestial display before him, though it was probably for the best.
With the scene around him no longer so mesmerizing, his mind took note of a problem that hadn’t existed in his past flights. His air system only had one hour of air. In the past he’d only spent a few minutes flying above safe altitudes and then a few more falling back down to a safe altitude. Up here however, gravity still didn’t seem to be in any hurry to drag him back down so if he didn’t do something he might actually be up here longer then he had air for. The thought of coming all this way, of touching the realm of the stars only to suffocate up here was hardly appealing to Light, so he looked around to see what he had to work with. He gave a quick prayer of thanks when he realized he still hadn’t fired the tenth (and last) set of rockets on his wing pack. Now if he could just get turned around.
It took a few minutes of squirming and a few tactically executed kicks, but Light Seeker managed to get the nose of the wing pack pointed back down and more or less aimed at central Equestria. He flipped the last switch, the rockets flared to life, and the feeling of weightlessness gave way to one of acceleration.
It took a moment but the world below him began to grow and Light Seeker smiled to himself. He had touched the realm of the stars and in doing so he found what he had truly been looking for, understanding. With his own eyes he had glimpsed the true nature of the heavens and came gained a small understanding about the nature of the world around him in the process. The irony of it wasn’t lost him either, his name was ‘Light Seeker’ and that it turned out the light he sought wasn’t the field of stars he had seen but the light of wisdom he had gained contemplating something new because of them, the thought made the pegasus grin.
Light felt the tug of gravity start to add its power to his acceleration. Then a red flag popped up in the back of his mind. Something was wrong yet he couldn’t place it. Glancing around didn’t help any either, as nothing seemed out of place on the wing pack.
A memory flashed in his mind. A lake, his first time diving and making the mistake that many young pegasi made. Diving into the lake from higher and higher until he finally hit the water too fast.
Where did that thought come from? And how is that relevant? There isn’t even any air up here, forget water. Light Seeker thought to himself still pondering the source of the uneasy feeling.
The answer came a few moments later when a sudden pain washed through his body as if he’d just smashed through something solid. Like a tower of rocks or something, he wasn’t sure, as he didn’t make a habit of crashing through solid objects.
Not that he had time to think about it, as immediately after the unforeseen impact fires started flaring up all around him. One of the things working with rockets had taught him was that unexpected fire plus rockets equaled very bad things. Acting on reflex alone his hoof shot out, sliding open a panel next to the ignition switches, revealing a small hoof-pedal. He slammed his hoof against it as hard as he could and every rocket mount point released from their attachment points. The spent rockets fell away behind while the four that were still lit shot off ahead of him, spiraling out of control before the outside heat cause the casings to fail and the unspent portions of the motors to explode outright.
Not that Light Seeker noticed that either, as his mind was focused on the flames still licking around him. With the rocker motors away there wasn’t anything flammable left on the wing pack, save himself, but fires were still flaring up all along the leading edges of the wing pack. The air friction was brutal as he desperately tried to hold his body inline… Air! The time he had spent in the realm of the stars had been short but he had already accepted the uselessness of the wings still folded to his side. But that one thought reminded him he had something to work with. He opened his wings and with a few desperate flaps rolled forward until the upper metal wing was on point for the decent, turning it into a makeshift shield.
Flames still licked around the edges of the makeshift shield, but only for a few seconds before the air friction had slowed him down some. Light Seeker used the time to contemplate the last few seconds trying to understand what had just happened. Then he laughed as the pieces fell into place in his mind. The warning his mind had given was right, just as hitting the surface of water too fast made it act like a solid, hitting the surface of the sky too fast had done the same. After that, realizing that the excess air friction was so hot that it was igniting the air around the wing pack was an easy guess. Not so easy was figuring out how he’d come down so much faster then he’d gone up. It took a while but the pegasus eventually realized it was all about air resistance. Rockets could only push air out of the way so fast so it provided a speed limit on the way up, but the realm of the stars had no air so nothing stopped the rockets from accelerating infinitely.
Freed from his pondering Light Seeker noticed a sound that shouldn’t be there, mixed in with the rush of the wind around him was a subtle hissing noise. For once on this disastrous decent he wasn’t surprised. The fact that the unexpected fires had burned small holes in the pressure suit wasn’t all that unexpected and if anything he was pleased at just how well the suit had held up considering fireproofing wasn’t something they had tried for when making it.
Regardless, Light Seeker held himself motionless for a moment to see how his body felt. He couldn’t feel any of the symptoms he remember the last time he’d been hit by depressurization sickness so the leaks must not be that bad. But leaks in the suit meant he’d be draining the air tanks faster than intended and the worry for not being at a safe altitude when they ran out renewed itself. He rolled into a proper dive to help speed his decent as best he could and aimed himself for the patch of green he figured was the hills north of Ponyville.
At first Light Seeker stayed in a steep dive to make sure he got to a safe altitude quickly, but as time went on his body reminded him he was in pain from hitting the sky. So he started pulling out of the dive a little, worrying more about landing more or less at the north edge of Ponyville. That’s when something else felt wrong. The wing pack’s weight was dragging him down. And that made no since, at the speed he was diving the wing pack should be more than supporting it’s own weight.
A glance at the wings and Light Seeker’s helmet took the hit that prevented his hoof from reaching his forehead. The wing pack had been built to take the forces of super sonic flight but not the conflagration that he ran into reentering the sky, using them as a makeshift heat shield had warped the wings and ruined their aerodynamics.
He tried his best to slow his fall but nothing was working. He gave up on the wing pack, it could fall to its doom without him. He slid his forehoof behind his back and kicked the release latch. Nothing happened. He kicked it harder. Still nothing, so he twisted his neck around until he could see what was wrong. Another boot-covered hoof struck his helmet as he realized the same heat that had warped the wings had warped the release latch, leaving it jammed.
“You threw the air at me like a brick wall! You lit me on fire! You threatened me with depressurization! Haven’t you tried to kill me enough today!?” Light Seeker shouted his frustrations out. “Relax Light, you got this, I’ve got…” he looked at the ground and gauged his altitude and speed of decent. “…Three maybe four minutes before I hit the ground. Plenty of time to think of a way out of this.”
* * * * * * *
“There we go.” Aunt Iris said. Finally pulling herself away from the telescope’s eyepiece and immediately writing down the setting numbers on the various knobs she had been manipulating while watching the flight.
“What’s happening! Can we look now?” The crusaders asked.
“He finally started coming down. One second.” The mare stalled the young ponies for a moment as she finished writing down numbers. Then twisting one of the knobs added, “Given how far away the focus point is it’ll probably be impossible to find him again but feel free to look.”
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo jumped in front of the viewing lens and jockeyed for position for a moment before Scootaloo backed off, letting the earth pony filly peer through the telescope first. Sweetie Belle walked over to Iris and examined the math being worked out on the paper. “What are you doing on here?”
“This?” Iris responded, “Oh, from the setting on the dials I can work out how far away from the telescope Light was and with the angle I can work out how high above it he was before he turned around. Then it’s just a matter of adding the altitude of this mountain we’re on and we have his total altitude for the flight.” She let lose a sharp whistle, “Would look at that. That’s more the double his previous record. Almost triple even.”
“Is that him?” Scootaloo asked.
“Couldn’t be, you’re not even looking though the telescope.” Iris dismissed the filly.
“But it’s suppose to be clear today, so wouldn’t those dots and line way up there have to be him?” She insisted.
Iris followed the filly’s gaze to the sky and with a bit of a squint she was able to notice four dark dots and an equally dark line between them. Dark dots, dark line, black smoke, very unlike the white smoke the colt’s rockets had made on the ascent. “No…” the mare whispered before bolting into the sky.
“What’s go’n on? What was that all about?” Apple Bloom asked, startled by the adult’s sudden departure.
“I don’t know but I think she thinks Light’s in trouble.” Sweetie Belle guessed.
“Then what are we waiting for crusaders? Let’s go!” Scootaloo shouted, helmet ready and already waiting on her scooter for her friends to get in the wagon.
“Do you think we can even get there in time to help? The path coming up here took forever.” Sweetie Belle asked.
“No time for that. Stay low, stay still” Scootaloo commanded as she pushed them forward.
“Wait, the path is that way. You’re not…!” Sweetie Belle never finished her question.
“She is.” Apple Bloom stated with an odd calmness, as the wagon followed the scooter over the edge of the plateau they had been on. She joined her unicorn friend in dropped to the floor of the wagon and bracing themselves as best they could, then she joined her friend in screaming.
If Scootaloo had the presence of mind, she would have realized that she’d never tackled a hill this steep on her scooter before. If she had the presence of mind, she would have realized she’d never been down a hill half this steep towing her wagon and friends. But she didn’t, she had become a creature of pure focus, and every neuron in her brain was firing to achieve one goal. Get down this hill to intercept and help the falling Light Seeker anyway she could.
Her mind mapped out a course down the hill, felt every spring of her muscles to read what her scooter was telling her. Using her wings to correct every minor mistake before the scooter bounced again and add thrust as she shot down the hill with a skill unmatched by anypony. And unknown to everypony, for she was too focused on her goal to notice what she was doing and the only other witness were too scared out of their minds by the semi-controlled roller coaster ride down the mountainside to notice either.
It wasn’t until the slope smoothed out and the resulting loss of speed that Apple Bloom felt safe enough to sit up and yell at her pegasus friend that the scooter riding filly realized just how reckless the decent was. Scootaloo promptly apologized and then immediately started flapping her wings again, resuming her attempt to ‘be there’ for Light Seeker when he landed.
Despite their best efforts to guide Scootaloo, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle frequently lost sight of the dot in the sky they were trying to intercept and it wasn’t until it was low enough to find with a glance that they were able to set a true intercept course.
* * * * * * *
Their best efforts left them arriving at the crash sight several minutes after they had seen the wing pack disappear into the surrounding hills and issue the sound of a thunderous crash. When they did arrive they found a sundered heap of broken and twisted metal and the lone somber figure of Iris sitting beside it staring into the sky with seemingly empty eyes.
“Is he…?” None of the crusaders dared finish the question, as if not saying the logical guess would somehow make it not true.
“Not here.” Was the response they got.
The crusaders’ ears perked up at the unexpected answer, “What do you mean?”
“Look for your self.” Iris said, as she gestured to the wreckage.
Among the twisted metal the fillies spotted the remains of the pressure suit and despite looking a little scorched and impaled by what used to be part of the wing pack’s frame it was in relatively good shape. More importantly it was empty, with no sign of the pony that should’ve been in it.
“I intercepted the wing pack a good minute before it hit the ground, but it was already empty. I can only assume that he bailed out sooner. But I couldn’t find him in the sky nearby so I figured this was the best place to wait… well speak o the devil.” Iris perked up as she tacked on the last line.
The crusaders followed the mare’s gaze and spotted a whiteish pegasus figure gliding their way. A round of cheers went up reveling in the wave of relief everypony on the ground felt.
“I did it. I reached beyond the sky. I touched the realm of the stars. It was so beautiful.” Light Seeker said, somewhat breathlessly, as he landed beside the crusaders’ wagon.
“And ya earned your cutie mark!” Apple Bloom exclaimed.
“Huh? Oh, so I did, didn’t even notice,” Light giggled as he twisted himself to see the symbol on his flank. Sure enough, a dark blue shield had formed a fitting shade of blue for the night sky. In the shield was the white silhouette of a flying pegasus surrounded by three colored stars. One white, one yellow, and the star in front of the pegasus silhouette was orange.
“Are you alright? What did you mean ‘beyond the sky’?” Aunt Iris asked, truly concerned by the scorch marks on her nephew, and his odd choice of words wasn’t helping her concerns for his health.
“The sky has a limit, it just stops once you get high enough,” the colt explained, sounding weak and his balance was starting to sway ever so lightly.
“That shield looks just like ours! Well the color’s wrong but the shape is dead on.” Sweetie Belle commented.
Their shield? Light Seeker thought and as if in response a memory flashed in his mind. The memory of a scooter being set beside some crafts. He turned to leave the clubhouse and the memory froze as he ran out, allowing him to notice what he had missed the first time, three capes hung by the door each baring the symbol of a blue shield with an adventuring pony silhouette. Light smiled, the crusaders were right, the shape of the shield was a match to the one he didn’t even realize he’d seen.
“Seems fitting to honor the ponies that helped me achieve my destiny. But I think I’m going to need your help one more time.” Light said, clearly becoming dizzy.
“Of course!” The crusaders beamed with pride, not noticing the colt’s state at all.
“Can you take me to the hospital, I think I’m going to pass out as soon as this adrenaline rush fades.” Light Seeker said as he collapsed into the wagon, making good on his threat to pass out even before he finished falling.
Light Seeker’s world had become one of darkness. Darkness and sounds, after a while he realized he must be asleep and couldn’t seem to wake up. With that he figured the sounds were voices but nothing they said made any since. As if his ears were hearing but his brain was refusing to interpret the sounds and give the words any meaning.
With one exception, one voice reached him in the darkness, one pony’s words came to him clearly, Scootaloo’s. This proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Hearing Scootaloo’s voice gave him comfort, but listening to her words gave him pain as she was always saying things like ‘He has to be okay.’ ‘Please wake up.’ ‘It was our fault, my fault.’
Light Seeker wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. That he was hurt because he had failed to understand how hard it would be to get down from above the sky. He knew his own failing were to blame for his own injuries, not hers and not the crusaders’. But he also knew that no matter how much he shouted it at the darkness his words couldn’t reach her, as long as he couldn’t wake up his words were trapped in his mind with him.
Eventually something more than Scootaloo’s words reached him, “Please get better. It was all my fault,” she said, but with the filly’s words, Light Seeker felt something, a hoof on his foreleg.
The sensation lit up his mind like a firework and he grasped on to it with every fiber of his being. He reached across with his free foreleg and pinned the hoof where it was. “Not your fault,” He moaned, finally feeling his eyelids lift.
“Light! You… you’re awake!”
“I heard your voice in the darkness, it showed me the way. Now would you please stop blaming yourself for my mistakes and promise me you won’t give up on your dream?” he asked weakly.
“It’s a deal, if you help me, I’ll never stop chasing my dream.” Scootaloo was both smiling and crying as she answered.
“No, you’re better then that, promise me you won’t give up, with or with out my help.” He insisted, fighting the weariness that surrounded him the moment he woke up.
She paused for a moment surprised by Light’s response, then she put on a brave face and answered with a simple nod.
“Sweet Celestia, he is awake!” The unexpected voice of a stallion brought the two foals attention to doctor now standing in the doorway.
As Scootaloo stepped back and the doctor stepped forward. Light Seeker’s senses shook off some of the grogginess and he began to notice things like the beeping machine beside him and the fact that he was covered from head to hoof in bandages. He had awaken in a hospital, a perfectly reasonable place to wake up now that he was remembering how he had passed out, but something felt wrong, felt missing.
“Can you tell me your name?” The doctor asked.
The colt realized what was wrong, he felt the pressure of the bandages, but nothing more, only an all-encompassing numbness not too unlike the one he felt in the darkness and he found it more painful in his mind than actual pain. “Light Seeker, and I really don’t like pain killers.” He finally answered.
“Well you weren’t exactly awake to object to them before. Although I’ll still leave that call up to your mother.” The doctor said, then turned his head to the nurse that now occupied the doorway into the room he added, “Speaking of the mother, once she’s finished eating, will you tell her that her son is awake?”
“You want me to wait until after she finishes?” The nurse seemed to find the request as odd as the foals in the room did.
“As far as I can tell she hasn’t eaten anything since she got here and the last thing I want is to have to treat her for starvation, so yes, let her eat something before you give her a reason to come running back up here.” The Doctor clarified, then turning back to the colt in the bed he added, “As for you, do you know where you are?”
The question brought back the feeling of wrong-ness that Light had felt a moment ago. As he looked around it was obvious that he was in a hospital. But the walls weren’t as white as they should have been, the bed was made of a stiff foam mattress and none of the voices from the hall sounded remotely familiar. “A hospital, somewhere, not Cloudsdale.” He answered.
“Close enough, at least we don’t have to add brain damage to the list.” The doctor added, with a hint of a laugh.
Light Seeker’s mind was awake now, even if his body wanted to go back to sleep. His curiosity had won, “So, doc, what’s the damage report?” he asked.
Any attempt at lightening the mood vanished from the doctor when he heard how the question was asked. Light couldn’t help but wonder if the stallion had picked up on the casualness of the question, he had basically used the same line he always did when he got another machine to fix at the machine shop after all.
With a harsh look in his eye the doctor answered, “The ‘damage report’ is, you’ve managed to acquire micro-fractures in most of the bones in your body. You dislocated your front legs. You’ve suffered a moderate concussion, minor burns. You had already gone into shock by the time your friends brought you in and almost died form it. And to top it all off you, by some miracle of all miracles, you’ve somehow acquired a case of arcaneotoxicosus.”
“Arcaneo what?” Light Seeker asked.
“As the name implies arcaneo, magic, toxicosus, poisoning. It’s a vary rare illness that, if left untreated, is always fatal. It’s normally caused when a unicorn who has tremendous magical power but very poor magic control conjures up too much magic but fails to use most of it in their spell. At that point the extra magic just seems to become energy that harmlessly absorbs into their body, but once the levels of energy absorbed into the body get past a certain point the cells in the body react the same way they do to poison. The reason why it’s so rare is that usually only unicorns that are too young to have any real power are that sloppy with their magic and any unicorn practiced enough to have the power also has the control to avoid that mistake. And until yesterday I could have sworn it was a unicorn-only affliction. How you came down with it is truly beyond me.”
If the doctor had been trying to scare him it worked. “Am I gonna…” Light Seeker muttered.
The hint of regret appeared in the doctor’s eyes as he seemed to think he’d gone too far with his lecture. His next response was with a more comforting tone, “I said ‘if left untreated’ didn’t I? We started wondering why you weren’t healing like you should have, so we started running more tests and found that you were emitting energy like those suffering arcaneotoxicosus. And while we don’t have anypony on staff that knows how to treat it, it turns out that the local librarian is a unicorn that knows how, she gave you your first treatment last night. That’s probably why you were finally able to wake up.”
“Tell her ‘thank you’ for me.”
“You can thank her yourself, you’ll be seeing her four times a day for the next few days as she administers your treatment.”
The doctor stepped back but Light Seeker could see in his eyes that the stallion wanted to say something more, so he gave the doctor the excuse to continue, “Was there something else I should know?”
“Just… whatever you did to yourself, don’t do it again. I expect you to make a full recovery now, but these are the kind of injuries that will come back in twenty to thirty years as constant aches and pains to remind what you did to yourself when you were young.”
* * * * * * *
The following week proved to be painfully slow, as Light Seeker found the boredom to be more painful in his mind than the actual pain his body was in. (once his mother agreed to have him taken off the painkillers anyway.) While visits from the crusaders were a welcome distraction they were too infrequent and too short when they did happen, and even the comics they let him borrow didn’t last but an hour or two before he’d burned through them.
The best distractions actualy came from the unicorn who was treating him for the magic poisoning, a unicorn named Twilight Sparkle, who oddly enough, seemed more in the know as to how he’d been injured than anypony at the hospital. When Twilight came to treat him she’d always have a bunch of questions regarding his flight. His conversations with her taught him a lot, like the fact that astronomers had theorized that the sky had an upper limit and Twilight seemed thrilled that he seemed to confirm the theory.
The downside to his conversations with Twilight was they were followed by the treatments for the magic poisoning. Together Light and Twilight theorized that he must have absorbed the energy into his body when he was above the sky. Nice as it was to guess the source of the illness, that didn’t change the fact that the treatment was both painful and tiring. Something that was apparently made worse by the fact that he wasn’t a unicorn and couldn’t help Twilight separate his own energy form the energy poisoning his body.
* * * * * * *
On the day he was to be released from the hospital, Light Seeker awoke to the sudden feeling of anxiety. A quick investigation found a small army of ponies had somehow snuck into his room. Along with his friends and family there were several strangers he’d never met before. Light really didn’t like being the center of attention to a crowd, maybe that’s why he liked fireworks so much. Everypony paid attention to the colorful explosions and nopony noticed the technician working the launcher. Not to mention that fireworks were best viewed at night so the launcher and its technicians usually couldn’t be seen at all from the stands of any organized event. That thought aside the stranger that Light Seeker had heard too much about not to identify as Rainbow Dash broke the silence.
“Hey there, when Scoots told me that a fellow awesome record holding pegasus was cooped up in the hospital I had to come visit you. And what better day to do that then when they let you out of here right?” Dash said, stepping forward. Her eyes then fell on the stack of comic books next to Light. “Really Scoots? You let him borrow the Daring Doo comics but didn’t you didn’t give him the novels too? Those things are just as good as the comics and take way longer to finish. And in this prison that’s a good thing.” Despite her choice of words Dash’s voice wasn’t one of criticism for the orange filly, but of sympathy for the colt in the bed. “Speaking of this prison, now that he’s awake can we get out of here?”
“Not yet Rainbow Dash,” Apple Bloom said, as she stepped forward. “The cutie mark crusaders have something to say first. Thing is, after everything you did to take that flight and get your cutie mark we got think’n that it just didn’t seem right that you couldn’t be a crusader anymore. So we got talk’n and decided that we needed the title of ‘honorary cutie mark crusader’ for any crusader who actualy earned their mark.”
As Apple Bloom finished speaking Sweetie Belle pulled a light blue cape out that had the same insignia as the capes the three fillies wore. Light Seeker glanced at the cape, then Rainbow Dash’s coat, then his own tail. All were the same color. Sweetie Belle noticed Light’s eyes “Yeah, we may have given Scoot the final say on what color the ‘honorary crusader’ cape would be. Should’ve guessed she’d pick light blue,” she commented, rolling her eyes.
“I don’t remember ever joining your club, but I would be honored to join you. Though I’m not sure what use I’ll be to you unless you need a pyro-technician for something.” Light answered his friends.
Twilight then stepped forward and said, “Light, I was hoping to ask you something.”
“Then ask.”
“I wanted to ask a small favor actualy, that is. Would you mind taking some extra tools and measuring equipment up with you the next time you…” Twilight’s question was cut short when she felt a small hoof on her chest and saw the colt was already shaking his head.
“There won’t be a next time.” Light answered.
“But, your cutie mark? Your destiny?” Twilight stumbled for a thought.
“Yes I touched the realm of the stars, and I found my destiny up there. But that doesn’t mean my destiny is to go back.”
“Then what does your cutie mark mean?” Twilight asked out of genuine curiosity.
Light Seeker brushed his new cape aside to reveal the mark in question. “You may see a pegasus flying among the heavens, I see one who found a light worth seeking. A light worth sharing.”
“Okay, but if you don’t plan on taking a camera up with you to take pictures how do you plan on sharing it?” Twilight asked, with a slight glimmer of hope in her reasoning.
Light Seeker knew that the ‘light’ he was talking about didn’t exist physically, that it existed everywhere and nowhere all at once. Se he closed his eyes to search for answers and once more and gazed out at the memory of the heavens in all their splendor. Like the greatest fireworks finally ever, frozen in time. He thought. He might not be able to do anything about freezing time but he could recreate a vision of that light for a brief shining moment as many times as it took to inspire that ‘light’ in others.
