Crash and Burn
For Spitfire, it had seemed like today was going to be another typical day as captain of the Wonderbolts. The qualifier for the Equestria Games had come and gone, and as everyone had expected Cloudsdale earned a spot in the games thanks to the Wonderbolts. But the games themselves, despite being a considerable ways away, would be no cakewalk. The Wonderbolts would be up against some tough competition, including a team from Ponyville led by one of their most promising up and coming recruits, Rainbow Dash.
It was no secret by now that the elite flyers had their eye on Rainbow, and speculation was that it was only a matter of when, not if they would ask her to officially join their ranks. But even though Spitfire had seen Rainbow's skills up close and personal, the young captain knew she couldn't just bend the rules. Rainbow was gonna have to earn her spot on the team the way everypony else did, regardless of potential.
And that was just the easy stuff. In addition to drilling the current team almost nonstop and weighing the next batch of recruits to consider for a spot on the team (assuming an opening occurred), there was also a lot of the far less luxurious paperwork to handle. To say nothing of the countless requests to have the Wonderbolts perform for all kinds of ceremonies all over Equestria, or the clean up work around the academy.
It was a tough job to be sure, but Spitfire hadn't become captain because she wanted to take it easy. And she had been expecting her workload to be the same as it always was.
Fate, it seemed, had different plans. Because not long after Spitfire had entered into her office and sat down at her desk, her office door swung open! "Captain, have you heard the news yet?!" The familiar voice of Soarin cried out!
Spitfire looked up, locking eyes with her fellow bolt. "What are you talking about, Soarin? What news?"
Soarin's response was to slam down a copy of a newspaper onto Spitfire's desk! "It's the latest edition of the Cloudsdale Chronicle, and you're not gonna believe what the front headline is!"
Spitfire was about to ask what, but as soon as her eyes had scanned the paper there was no need to do so. There it was in large, unmistakable letters for all to read. The headline screamed: "Crisis in Cloudsdale: Qualifier Under Question Following Allegations"
The young captain felt a knot form in her stomach as the paper dropped from her hooves. No words could escape her mouth that could hope to express the shock of this all! How could this have happened?! Why now?! It was really a stupid question, she had been expecting word of mouth to spread about what had happened at Rainbow Falls. Looking back on it, she could agree that it was not the finest moment for Cloudsdale's finest. Even now, just thinking about it made her feel ashamed and sick to her stomach.
A frown formed on Soarin's face. Not because the allegations within the paper were new, he'd already been pretty upset with Spitfire's decision at the time and it had taken at least a week's worth of apologies before he would talk to Spitfire again (and he and Fleetfoot still weren't exactly on speaking terms. They seemed to largely agree to stay out of each other's way). No, he was frowning because like Spitfire he knew that something like this was surely going to damage, perhaps even destroy the reputation of the Wonderbolts. "I just picked up a copy this morning. By now it's probably on every news stand in Cloudsdale. And supposedly they're running off copies to other stands that are asking about it. It's the fiasco with The Foal Free Press all over again, but this time it's come for us!"
"That was different! The Foal Free Press was schoolyard gossip gone bad," Spitfire sternly protested as she finally found the words to speak. "We did what the papers say we did. I guess it was kind of silly not to expect others to find out about the Rainbow Falls incident."
Soarin couldn't help but ponder. "You think Rainbow Dash squealed, even unintentionally?"
Spitfire shook her head. "Rainbow looked pretty upset, but she wouldn't do something like this. She'd wanna settle it like a professional, in the arena. Or in this case, at the games," She then commented. "This was somepony else, probably a games official we weren't paying attention to. And there's nothing to complain about it, because if we'd played by the rules there wouldn't be a story."
"So, what are we going to do, Captain?" Soarin asked Spitfire as he picked up the paper. "This isn't going to go away! Ponies are gonna demand answers!"
"There's only one thing we can do in this situation, Soarin," Spitfire glumly confessed. "We'll have to come clean. I'll have to come clean."
At that, Soarin gasped anew! "What?! Spitfire, are you crazy?! You weren't the only one involved, you know. And you said it yourself, it was originally Fleetfoot's idea to replace me."
Spitfire was quick to protest. "So? If I went along with it instead of shooting her down, I'm as guilty as she is. In fact, I'm her superior, and you and I go back a lot longer than she does. I should've known better, I shouldn't have written you off so quickly the way she did. With Fleetfoot, impulsive decisions are kind of what she does whether they're good or bad. I'm supposed to talk her out of them, not go along with them," And then she sighed. "Even if I put Fleetfoot on probation or kick her off the team, it's not going to be enough. You, her, and I are gonna have to face the music."
"I was afraid you'd say that," Soarin remarked as he trotted out of the office. "Fleetfoot's not gonna be happy about this."
By some miracle, Spitfire was able to broker a peace between Soarin and Fleetfoot for the sake of the hastily arranged press conference. She made sure to let Soarin speak first, so that ponies would understand that he was innocent.
But even when Fleetfoot tried to take the fall for the decision to replace Soarin, Spitfire refused to let the fast flyer do so. "It ceased to be solely your decision when I too went along with it, Fleetfoot." She told the mare.
Fleetfoot tried to protest. "But Spitfire-"
Spitfire cut Fleetfoot off! "-But nothing, Fleetfoot! We're both complicit in this, and I won't let you throw your career away just to save mine!" She then told the gathered crowd. "In light of the Rainbow Falls incident, the only course of action I can think to take in order to restore the reputation of the Wonderbolts, is for me to resign. And that is a decision that is effective immediately."
Everyone gasped, including Fleetfoot and Soarin! Never before in the entire history of the Wonderbolts had a captain ever resigned!
"You heard me!" Spitfire loudly declared, just in case any had their doubts. "I, Spitfire, do hereby resign my post as captain of the Wonderbolts. My decision is final. And I shall leave it up the bolts not involved with what went down in Rainbow Falls to decide who shall replace me."
Word of the informal resignation (as there was a formal process to handle resignations, despite it never having happened before) spread even faster than the news of the Rainbow Falls incident had been broken. It was even more of a shock to an already shocked public!
And you can bet there was one pony who was more shocked than anypony else! Rainbow Dash was practically speechless! "This... this can't actually be real!" She proclaimed upon reading the announcement. But in her heart the brash speedster knew it to be true.
But Rainbow wasn't about to let Spitfire just resign out of the blue, no sir!
The pegasus whose coat was the same blue as the sky around her immediately made a beeline for Wonderbolts Academy once the shock had worn off. "I hope I'm not too late to talk some sense into you, Spitfire," She thought to herself. "You're not the only pony who's done things they regret."
Spitfire was just on her way to her office when Rainbow Dash happened to land on the academy runway, almost out of breath from her flight that might as well have been halfway across Equestria. "Spitfire! I can't let you do this!" She immediately protested even while panting and trying to catch her breath.
Spitfire did her best not to groan. "Dash, I expected you of all ponies to understand. What I tried to do to you back at Rainbow Falls was terrible! I'm ashamed I ever thought of using you to be a replacement for Soarin, especially without asking him if that's what he wanted."
Rainbow was quick to argue back. "I was there, I know what went down. But this isn't the way to resolve the issue. You can't just abandon the team because you made a bad decision."
"My bad decision has cost the team its reputation!" Spitfire protested! "If you were in my horseshoes you would see the situation the same way I do! Please, get out of my way. There's nothing you can say to make me change my mind. I have to do this, not for my sake but for the sake of the entire team."
Fighting back a groan, Rainbow flew in front of Spitfire to block the captain's path. "What part of 'I can't let you do this!' don't you understand?!" And right then and there she got an idea. "You know what? How about we settle this the way flyers like us usually settle disputes? A race: You and I. If I win, you agree to abandon your decision to resign, and we work through the fallout over the incident together."
"Fine," Spitfire firmly declared. "But if I win, you have to back off and let me do what I believe is necessary to put the Wonderbolts' reputation back on the right track. Deal?"
"Deal!" Rainbow agreed as she and Spitfire shook wings, cementing the terms! "Now, how should we do this? Where should we race?"
The young captain replied. "We've got a pretty good track right here. We'll start on the academy runway, loop around the outskirts of Cloudsdale proper and come back. I'm thinking three laps should be more than enough to decide it."
The brash speedster eagerly agreed with a nod. "Sounds reasonable to me, Spitfire. This should be good practice for our rematch at the Equestria Games!"
Spitfire could only shake her head. "This ain't practice, this is the real deal!"
Rainbow said nothing in reply as she and Spitfire took their positions on the academy runway, getting their wings ready. But in her mind she was thinking. "I'll make you come to your senses one way or another by the end of this race, Spitfire! Because I know you well enough to know that what you're about to do isn't the answer!"
The three laps came and went almost in the blink of an eye. Rainbow Dash and Spitfire were evenly matched the whole way through, neither one truly holding the lead for any considerable length of time and both of them only ever trailing the other by a short distance at any point.
For a time it even seemed like the race results would be inconclusive, that the two pegasi would end up tying and neither would be satisfied. What would happen then, nopony could say for sure.
Yet that was ultimately not how the race ended. By approximately a quarter of a nose or so, Spitfire crossed the finish line and skidded to a halt on the runway first. Rainbow Dash followed shortly afterward but appeared to be rather downtrodden. It appeared that her hope to discourage Spitfire from resigning had failed.
But Spitfire knew something was up. She had sensed it during that final turn when she and Rainbow were neck and neck. So she trotted over to the mare who had challenged her and soon they were eye to eye, snout to snout. The pegasus with a brilliant gold coat almost roared in her famous drill sergeant tone. "Dash, what the hay was that?! I know you took a dive back there!"
Rainbow appeared to feign ignorance and innocence. "What in Equestria are you talking about, Spitfire? You beat me fair and square."
Spitfire wasn't fooled for even a second. "I didn't and you know it. You could've easily pressed ahead, I know you still had more left in the tank. I've seen you push yourself past your limits before. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't find that admirable. So how come you held back this time?!" She demanded! "You'd better have a darn good reason! I'm in no mood for your games!"
Rainbow sighed as she confessed. "If I beat you, you wouldn't realize what you needed to understand. You're going about this all wrong," And she explained. "So you messed up? You think you're the only pony who's done things they regret?! I should've been smart enough to realize what you and Fleetfoot were doing long before I pretended to get injured, but I didn't."
"You never would've had to make the decision if Fleetfoot and I hadn't written Soarin off the moment he injured his wing during practice," Spitfire protested. "Even after you came back, your team barely qualified. And had we not distracted you with our offer, you could've spent all that time training your team to be better."
"That's on me, not you!" Rainbow Dash insisted! "I knew I was taking a risk when I picked Fluttershy and Bulk Biceps, but I had a strategy. Fluttershy practically volunteered for the aerial relay, and you saw it firsthoof how great a flyer she could be in the right circumstances."
Spitfire only arched an eyebrow upward. "What about Bulk Biceps? He tried out for the academy, but he didn't make the cut like you did. He lacked the kind of flying power we needed."
"Sure, Bulk Biceps isn't exactly fast, but he doesn't need to be. I've got more than enough speed to close any gap!" Rainbow half explained/half boasted. "I picked him for a different reason, his strength. You can't deny he's got staying power. It takes a lot longer for a guy like him to wear himself down then it does for most flyers. Maybe not enough to outflank a speed demon like Fleetfoot, but enough to take the pressure off Fluttershy when the other teams have to catch up to her because they pushed too fast too soon. And yeah, our qualifying performance was far from perfection. But we still made it to the games, and you can be darn sure we're working our tails off in training to make sure we do better!"
Spitfire wasn't convinced. "That doesn't change the fact that because of what Fleetfoot and I tried to do, you almost weren't there to fly for Ponyville's team. And without you, they would've been too demoralized to make it."
The brash speedster only replied. "You may have been putting pressure on me, but at any point I could've chosen not to go along with it. Deep down, I knew what I was doing wasn't right. But at the time I could only care about being with the best, forgetting about who I was supposed to represent. You didn't force me to do anything I didn't want to do on my own."
"It doesn't matter, Dash," Spitfire shook her head. "What happened at Rainbow Falls was shameful, disgraceful, and behavior not befitting the reputation we Wonderbolts are supposed to have. We betrayed what we stood for, and we dragged Cloudsdale's good name through the mud when Fleetfoot and I tried to recruit you."
"So? You've gotta learn to stop beating yourself up so much over past mistakes, Spitfire," Rainbow firmly protested. "Take it from a pony who's been where you've been. Maybe not in the exact same situation, but in a situation all the same where she feels like she messed up and let everypony down. You know what I learned? I learned that we can't change what we've done in the past. But we can change how we let it define who we are! We all make mistakes, we all do things we regret and wish more than anything we hadn't done. What matters is how we learn from those mistakes to ensure we don't repeat them."
Spitfire argued back. "And what would you have me do?! What would you have me say to all the ponies who look up to the Wonderbolts, and are now ashamed to learn that their idols and their inspiration were willing to play dirty and write off one of their own?!"
Rainbow Dash was quick to answer. "I don't need to guess, I know how they might feel. I've looked up to you, to Soarin, to all the Wonderbolts ever since I was but a filly! It's always been my dream to fly alongside you guys someday! That hasn't changed just because of a few mistakes. I've come to realize you're not these perfect beings, that you're not invincible like I thought you were in my foalhood. But I know you all well enough to know that what I saw in Rainbow Falls isn't who you are deep down," And she added. "I've seen you guys leap into action to save a performer who wasn't even supposed to be in the Best Young Flyers competition. I've watched you take on a huge dragon you had no chance to defeat, just to save a pony in danger. And now I've seen you feel shame for a mistake made that hurt a teammate more emotionally than he was hurt physically. That, to me, says a whole awful lot more about who the Wonderbolts are than one bad example that could've happened to anypony."
"And you taking a dive for me was supposed to help me realize that?" Spitfire questioned.
Rainbow shook her head. "No. It was supposed to make you realize what it is about being a Wonderbolt that's so great. Why so many ponies from far and wide look up to you the way they do. Because you're the best of the best. And knowing that you make mistakes, knowing that you don't always come out on top or save the day when called into action, that just makes me appreciate you more," She was quick to add. "If a fan like me hasn't given up on her dreams of joining the team, then you know that there are still ponies out there who haven't lost faith in you yet. But if you step down now, you'll let what happened at Rainbow Falls define the team forever. If you truly want to put it all behind you, you'll face up to whatever consequences the games officials decide to inflict on you. If it means another group of flyers has to compete in the Equestria Games instead of the Wonderbolts, so be it."
Spitfire reluctantly held off on making her resignation official after the race, largely because the race itself had worn her down and she needed to rest. But it was while she was resting that the young captain had time to think about what Rainbow Dash had said to her.
Much as she wanted to believe otherwise, the young captain started to realize that Rainbow Dash was right. Resigning, at least right now, wasn't the right call to make. Nopony knew what the officials in charge of the Equestria Games would decide, and until they did it wouldn't do any good to try and add more fuel to the fire.
The "scandal" lurked in the news for about a week before word from the games officials was received. The letter sent to the Wonderbolts read as follows:
After careful consideration of all the facts presented to us, we have decided that the Wonderbolts will be allowed to continue to serve as Cloudsdale's representatives for the games. For it was ultimately the captain of the Ponyville team who decided of her own free will to train with Cloudsdale, despite pressure from the Wonderbolts no doubt influencing her behavior.
However, we do believe that the Wonderbolts should not simply be left off with a warning.
If you're willing to agree, we would like to request that Captain Spitfire and Fleetfoot both be placed on probation until after the Equestria Games have concluded. In keeping with the chain of command, Soarin shall assume the role of acting captain for the duration of this probation.
Sincerely,
Miss Harshwhinny and the Equestria Games Officials
Just like that, the verdict had been decided. Spitfire agreed to the terms and convinced Fleetfoot to do the same. She also made sure to clarify that her resignation had been considered and denied. She would still be able to come back to the role of captain after serving her time.
Slowly but surely, as the days turned into weeks, the public more or less forgot about the Rainbow Falls incident and moved on. The Wonderbolts' reputation survived.
But Spitfire had learned a powerful lesson. Not only about how one's actions have consequences, intended or otherwise, but that the best way to atone for wrongdoing was to not immediately jump to an idea of "retribution". Instead, it was best to wait to see what others felt was the best course of action, and consider and act upon it accordingly.