Trying to win a time war, Starlight Glimmer created a thousand alternate histories. In one of those worlds that could have been, Scootaloo learned to fly.
Trying to win a time war, Starlight Glimmer created a thousand alternate histories.
In one of those worlds that could have been, Scootaloo learned to fly.
Content Warning: Brief, indirect E-rated level suicide/self-harm allusion, like some of those cartoons you probably saw as a kid.
People I'd like to thank for kindly volunteering their prereading services to provide feedback on a rather different (and shorter) version of this story: Mr Extra. As usual, I cannot guarantee that I correctly applied their feedback.
"If you're doing it pegasus style, the trick is to use your folded wings just slightly, to adjust your ballistic trajectory after you shoot out of the cannon," said an athletic mare named Scootaloo. "If you try to FLAP your wings, spreading them out that far just slows you down. And then you fall short of the target, or your wings catch on one of the hoops."
Ponies in the audience murmured. In the press section, some used pencils and quills to take notes.
Scootaloo was a leading competitor in the new Equestrian sport of cannonflight. Any type of pony could do it--pegasi, unicorns, and even earth ponies.
Trixie Lulamoon had invented competitive cannonflight three years ago, when she'd borrowed one of Pinkie Pie's party cannons and tried to shoot herself down the throat of a manticore. Those were dark days in Trixie's life, when her career had been failing and she'd felt she had nothing to live for.
But now things were looking up, for Trixie and for other cannonflight athletes too!
Trixie took her wizard-style hat off her head, revealing a conical crash helmet. "Scootaloo's pegasus style is good, of course. But the Great and Amazing TRIXIE knows some tricks of her own. Cannonflight is like surfing. Every part of your body can help you balance and steer. Even your tail can get into the game."
"Wow!" a little blue pegasus said, peeking out between two larger ponies in the front row. "I wish I could be as good at cannonflight as you and Scootaloo are. Using just my wings I can fly fast, but not as fast as if a big cannon had shot me into the sky."
Trixie smiled down at the little pegasus filly. "You certainly are adorable."
The pegasus said, "I'm an orphan. Looking more adorable than anypony else is the only way I can survive."
Trixie nodded. "Would you like somepony to adopt you, and teach you the ways of cannonflight?"
The little pegasus pressed forward, squeezing through the gap between two other ponies to stand in front of them. "WOULD I! Is that something that can really happen? To ME?"
Trixie shrugged. "Ask Scootaloo over there. I'm not a pegasus."
With a flash of light, a purple unicorn appeared between Trixie and Scootaloo. She wore a shawl over her shoulders and back. There weren't any purple alicorns in this timeline, so she couldn't have been one of those.
The blue filly stared, her mouth falling open. After a moment, she asked, "Are YOU my new mommy?"
The unicorn shook her head. "I'm here to kick purple unicorn tail." She craned her head around to look at her own body. "Not MY tail. I mean a DIFFERENT pony with a horn, which she uses for EVIL. I'm here to put an end to this timeline, and restore the proper stream of history."
"Aw!" the blue filly complained. "I thought maybe today I was FINALLY going to be adopted."
As the rockets strapped to the scooter caught fire, the pegasus filly and her little vehicle accelerated. She streaked along the track so fast, everything became a blur.
Scootaloo gripped the scooter's front bars firmly, carefully using her own weight to steer, keeping her scooter on the exact center line.
When the track curved upwards, Scootaloo was ready. She hunched down to reduce her air resistance. As the track took her higher and higher above the ground, she kept her speed and aim just perfect.
The track ended in a dropoff. Scootaloo's momentum kept her going, tracing an upward arc through the sky above her audience.
After a fraction of a minute that seemed like forever, Scootaloo and her scooter reached the other end of the gap. For somepony who was still moving so fast, Scootaloo's touchdown upon the track was very gentle.
A glow appeared around Scootaloo. She and her scooter rose into the air, where a brilliant light prevented anycreature from looking directly at them.
Minutes later, the light faded, and Scootaloo came crashing back down onto the track. She almost took a spill, but her riding skills saved her. As Scootaloo reached the end of the track, her scooter's burned-out rockets smoked. Scootaloo rode her scooter back around, rolling along the ground directly in front of her admiring audience.
The audience was struck speechless.
Scootaloo took one forehoof off her scooter, to reach up and feel her forehead. She touched the base of a horn.
"YES!" she crowed. "I'm an ALICORN!"
Scootaloo wondered if she could use her new horn to do a spell. She'd heard the easiest of all unicorn spells was "magical fireworks of colored light."
Scootaloo focused her mind, gathering magic inside herself. She imagined a ball of colored light shooting out of her horn.
One side of Scootaloo's forehead burned and stung. "OUCH! Oh BUCK!" She reached up again reflexively, to feel for the injury.
Part of her forehead was covered with gritty, scorched ash. Scootaloo felt all around the ash-covered area. Something poked the back of her wrist.
Scootaloo buzzed her wings, riding her scooter to the edge of a puddle. She stared down into the dirty water. An orange reflection looked back at her. The pony had a face dirty with ash, tragically undersized wings, and a misshapen horn that jutted from her head and curved back around to point at her own forehead.
Scootaloo grimaced. "A pony could almost put her own eye out with that thing. And not just ALMOST, if she tries a powerful spell."
The little pegasus/alicorn wondered how long it would take to find a hacksaw.
Scootaloo sat at the top of a high cliff, feeling the wind blow through her mane, and catch in the feathers of her undersized wings. She looked at the valley far below.
It sure was a long way down. If she fell all the way to the bottom, she didn't think there would be much left of her. Hardly even enough for the wild animals to eat, if they could find the pieces.
Scootaloo watched, and waited.
After about an hour, the view had changed. The formerly clear sky was spotted with clouds. One of the clouds even touched the cliff.
Scootaloo checked the straps on her backpack. She took a deep breath, walked away from the cliff's edge, and turned around. Scootaloo ran as fast as she could, straight at the empty space with the cloud below it.
She didn't even look down. She ran right over the edge. When her hooves met...nothing? She didn't panic. She knew that as a pegasus, she could walk on clouds. All she had to do was...
...wait...
...as the air rushed past her...
...her wings instinctively spread, tried to catch the air...slowing her fall?
No, the air rushed past even faster. Her wings were just too small.
The air ruffled her feathers and fur, caught her mane and tail, pulling, tugging...
It was only a few seconds. But while it lasted, it seemed like forever.
When Scootaloo's body hit the soft, fluffy cloud, she rolled to try to take up some of the impact. She felt herself sink partway into the cloud, but she didn't fall all the way through.
Thank Celestia.
Scootaloo looked in every direction, all across the cloudtop. It was a big one. A wide, open space. Plenty of cloud to work with.
Scootaloo took off her backpack, and unzipped it. If anypony had watched her jump, they probably would have expected her to have a parachute inside.
But Scootaloo wasn't like other ponies. When she reached into her pack, she pulled out two oblong objects, shaped like blunt, distorted cones. They were the front and back ends she'd sawed off a broken kayak. Scootaloo had filed and sanded the cut edges to smooth them, to keep them from fraying her backpack's fabric or damaging anything else.
Anything streamlined enough to speed through the water, she'd thought, should be streamlined enough to speed through air, too.
Scootaloo had visited Rainbow Dash's house many times, and Cloudsdale too. She'd even taken a class in Cloudsdale, on cloud house construction. Most pegasi who'd watched the tiny-winged pegasus, learning how to build by using the clouds she couldn't even fly up to on her own? They'd probably thought she was crazy.
Scootaloo gathered up soft cloud material with her hooves and wings, rolling it into a long, stout cylinder. It was much like one of the columns that held up Rainbow's porch roof...or the columns that supported half the porches and gables in Cloudsdale, for that matter.
Even though Scootaloo's wings weren't large enough to fly with, her natural pegasus magic still let her mold and shape cloudstuff just like any other pegasus could.
Scootaloo had learned how to infuse her pegasus magic into small objects, to ensure a cloud house would support them as securely as possible. (Pegasi who neglected to learn and practice these skills sometimes found empty spaces where their heaviest possessions HAD been, after the weighty things slowly sank through the cloud floor, and fell to the ground far below.) Scootaloo rubbed each kayak end with her wings, and with her hooves, charging it up with pegasus cloud-stiction magic. She thrust the kayak front onto one end of her cloudhouse column, surrounding the column's tip. She shaped and smoothed the junction between column and kayak scrap, making everything fit as well as she could.
Scootaloo lifted the capped column a few hoofwidths above the main cloudtop. The cloud column floated there, hovering in place.
She pushed the kayak rear section onto the column's other end. She fitted and smoothed the cloud to make the junction good.
Finally, Scootaloo dug carefully into the column's center. She created an inner compartment large enough to hold her lower torso and her filly-short hindlegs.
The pegasus filly shaped and smoothed, wanting to make the structure as strong as possible, both inside and out.
Countless times, Scoots had seen cloud houses support pegasi. She'd seen smaller clouds support her friend Rainbow Dash, who napped on a soft cloud almost every day.
Scootaloo had seen tiny clouds support natural flyers smaller than ponies: usually ducks and other birds.
But would the cloud kayak work?
Or would it prove too small to support the filly? Would it sink? If it sank, how fast? Would it only drift downwards, or plummet?
But EVEN IF the odd boatlike thing she'd constructed wasn't quite enough to float her? She thought if she used her inadequate wings to help support SOME of her weight, the craft MIGHT not drop so fast that the fall would kill her if she struck the ground.
But she hoped it wouldn't come to that.
Scootaloo glanced over at the cliff. If she wanted to try this while the main cloud still touched the cliff, she'd better get started now.
The pegasus climbed up onto her reshaped column, and into the compartment she'd sculpted to fit her own body. The cloud kayak bobbed with her motion, but it didn't seem to sink, and didn't break.
Scootaloo cheered loudly. She buzzed her wings a little, and the kayak moved forward. She buzzed one wing at a time, making the kayak turn left, then right.
Scootaloo leaned back, raising the kayak's nose. She buzzed one wing vigorously, and the other wing not quite as much. The kayak's path curved through the air, tracing an upward spiral.
Scootaloo buzzed her kayak up higher than the clifftop, and darted towards the place from which she'd leaped. Scootaloo shot directly above the rock-studded grass from which she'd started her cloud adventure.
Scootaloo laughed with delight. From now on, just about any pegasus with a wing defect like hers would be able to fly. She said, "I'm just one pegasus filly, making my very first flight. But I conquer the air for thousands of other pegasi like me, who will join me in the sky. Maybe someday, I'll be able to fly even faster than a Wonderbolt." Scootaloo wondered...if she invented a good enough cloud kayak, and trained and practiced for enough years...might she one day do a sonic rainboom?
Scootaloo buzzed her wings again. She could hardly wait to show Rainbow Dash!
Scootaloo squinted in the sunlight. What was that tiny blue speck, in the sky far away? Was that Rainbow? Had the grownup pegasus guessed that Scootaloo had sneaked off to try some dangerous experiment, and come to look for her?
Scootaloo waved one forelimb, and shouted as loud as she could. "I'm flying!" she shouted. "I'm flying! I can do it!"
In that moment, the battle between Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer reset the timeline again, rewriting history.
Nopony would ever remember how Scootaloo had discovered flight.
Twilight Explains Why Scootaloo Must Be an Orphan Forever?
"So you see?" Twilight said. "Maybe you sometimes feel unimportant or unloved, like you don't really make a difference. But you're one of the most important ponies in the world. The surrender of Nightmare Moon, the defeat of Tirek...even the sun rising in the morning...these things ALL depend on our world following the proper sequence of events. Changing even the smallest detail could have indirect effects that would doom everycreature."
Twilight scooted around to sit beside Scootaloo, and wrapped a wing around the pegasus filly. "And that's why, for the safety of our world and to keep everypony from dying horribly, no matter how unfair it might seem, you have to remain an orphan."
On Scootaloo's other side, a light blue, prismatic-maned pegasus nudged the little filly. Rainbow Dash said, "But there's something else I want you to do, to help keep Equestria safe, and help things turn out right."
Scootaloo asked, "What is it? Is it something even worse than being an orphan?"
Rainbow Dash said, "In this timeline, my mom and dad haven't had any children except for me. It's kind of lonely. I wish so much that I had a sister, like Rarity and Applejack do. So Scootaloo...will YOU be my sister, and move out of your cardboard box to come live with me? It might not be a hundred percent official, but it would mean the world to me."
"Yes!" Scootaloo said. "I'll be your sister. This is SO COOL!"
"Awesome!" Rainbow pulled a messy pile of papers out of a saddlebag. "Here's the household chore list. Don't forget to clean the house this weekend. You've let it become a HUGE mess."
Rainbow grinned cockily. "See ya later. I gotta do some stuff." She unfolded her wings and flew away.
Scootaloo started ruffling through the papers. "Wipe down the whole cloud with cloud polish once a week, until it shines? Check Tank for fleas? Wash all the pizza boxes out with soap so they can be reused to hold asparagus flavor ice cream?"
Scootaloo sighed. "I'm not sure I really WANT to be Rainbow's sister."
A scratchy voice called down from above. "Hay, pones!"
Twilight looked up, seeing a hovering pegasus mare. "What is it, you entitled, overgrown, cloud-sucking brat?"
Rainbow smiled. "First thing you gotta learn, Scootaloo: sometimes I like to play pranks." Dashie laughed. "Your only chore your first weekend living with me is gonna be eating ice cream." The pegasus laughed again. "We can split up the household chores some other time."
Scootaloo said, "I guess I can TRY it."
Dashie nodded. "Sounds good to me." She descended, landing in front of the two other ponies. "And Scootaloo?"
"What?"
Dashie pulled the filly into a hug. "Thanks for being my sister, Scoots."
Scoots pressed herself against Dashie. "I'm going to eat ALL the ice cream, and not let you have any. And I love you too."
