Spellbound Fireflies (26 page)

“Thanks.”  Scootaloo grinned and touched her hoof to the goggles, feeling the durable weave of the strap, solid metal frames, and thick, scratch-proof lenses.  She didn’t know much about flight accessories, but she could tell just by the touch and feel that these were high quality and designed to stand up to intense use.

“They were my dad’s.  When he first flew, the Wonderbolts made him an honorary member of the team.  This is what they gave him.”

Scootaloo’s eyes widened.  She ran her hoof back over the strap and found the small indentation of the lightning bolt, stitched tightly into the nylon.  Her voice came out awed and hushed.  “What?  I…I can’t take these…”

“They’re yours.”  Rainbow set her hoof on Scootaloo’s shoulder.  “You earned them.  Every single bit of ‘em.  You worked
hard
, Scoots.  Harder’n I’ve ever seen anypony work.  And not just here, with me.  With Twilight, too.  An’ all while you had a ton of other stuff on your mind, eatin’ at you.  I could see it, but you never let it stop you.  Every single day of trainin’, you brought your
all
.”  She touched the frames of the goggles gently.  “Everything these represent…the team and its ideals, the drive and strength, and most of all, the pony they belonged to.  If my dad were here, I know he’d give you these himself.”

Rainbow’s voice dropped low as she swept Scootaloo into a hug.  “I’m
so proud
of you, Scoots.”

Scootaloo closed her eyes, nestled into Rainbow’s chest.  Part of her didn’t even need to fly anymore.  Everything was already perfect.

Still holding the filly, Rainbow’s voice took on a warm and amused playfulness.  “And I’m proud of you for finally talkin’ to Sweetie Belle.  I’ve been waitin’
months
.”

Scootaloo giggled and shook her head.  “Was I really obvious?”

“Totally.”

She sighed and smirked.  “Well, you were right about another thing.  Kissin’ somepony without talkin’ about it first is
really
awkward.”

Rainbow sat back, regarding Scootaloo.  At the filly’s exasperated and self-effacing expression, she snorted loudly.  “Aw man.  How bad?”

“Really,
really
bad,” she moaned.  A warm smile slowly spread across her muzzle. “But...it’s all
awesome
now.”

Snickering, Rainbow clapped Scootaloo on the shoulder.  “Well, don’t beat yourself up about it too much.  Just somethin’ else we have in common.”

Scootaloo laughed ruefully and shook her head.

Rainbow leaned closer, a predatory glimmer in her eyes.  “So...you ready to fly?”

“I’ve always been ready.”

“I know.”

The two silently stood and extended their wings, fluffing out their feathers in tandem and shaking their muscles loose.  Scootaloo automatically raced through the plethora of wing positions and adjusted the Wonderbolts goggles on her face.  Buckaneer Blaze’s goggles.  Her goggles.

They traded a confident smirk and turned back to their audience.  Twilight beamed brightly, swinging her hindlegs merrily off the bench.  Apple Bloom, a blush on her face evident across the distance, hugged a giggling Sweetie Belle with one foreleg.  Both waved enthusiastically.

“Alright, Scoots,” Rainbow murmured, “On the count of three?”

“One,” they both said, crouching down and spreading their wings.

“Two.”  Scootaloo flexed her legs tight, ready to push off with all her strength.

“Three!”

Their wings dropped downwards and they leapt from the ground.  Five beats later, with the wind in her mane and racing across her feathers, howling against her ears, and rustling the fine hairs of her coat, the filly knew one, undeniable, unequivocal fact.

She was flying.

A howl of joy filled the park.

She darted away from the upward ascent alongside Rainbow, curving off across the sky.  She pumped her wings, catching the air, bending it, forcing it to her will, sending herself barreling through space.  The air tugged at her mouth, stretching her smile even wider.  The glass over her eyes kept her vision clear, or she surely would be squinting.

She discovered she was laughing.

She hit an updraft and spread her feathers wide, catching and shaping the warm air to propel her higher.  She tucked and spun, whirling in a corkscrew, hearing her own mirth thunder over her shoulder.

A cage Scootaloo didn’t even know existed had been torn away, smashed to twisted pieces like a rickshaw at the bottom of a hill.  She was free.  For the first time in her life, she was free.

Scootaloo whooped, careening out of the spin and darting straight up.  She caught a glimpse of Rainbow Dash off to the side, watching her.  A burning desire to show off spread through her body, and without slowing down she turned sharply, instantly parallel with the ground.  She beat her small wings harder, pushing her speed, willing herself faster.  She turned again.  And again.

The force pulling at her threatened to crush the breath from her lungs.  Each twist sent violent vibrations rattling down to her hooves.  Aches ran to her spine each time her feathers bent away from the sudden shifts.

All the training with Rainbow was immediately apparent; without all that work, she never would have been able to move like she was moving.

Her laughter grew louder still and she aimed for a small cloud.  At breakneck speeds her scooter couldn’t hope to reach, she careened through the puff, feeling the humid breath on her face as it exploded to vapor.  She flew to another and whipped around it in a barrel roll, sending it into a lopsided spin.

Flinging herself upward, she arched across the park.  Glancing over her shoulder, her eyes widened.  She was going fast enough to leave a trail, thick and purple to match her mane, billowing like tongues of flame.  She grinned maniacally, turning aggressively, watching her trail twist and bend to follow her hooves.  With a devil-may-care laugh on her lips, she spun upwards, letting her speed bleed away, gravity slowly catching up and pulling her back towards the ground.

At the apex of her ascent, she hung suspended in the sky, weightless, wings spread and still, completely and utterly
free
.  In the instance of absolute freedom, she touched the side of her goggles and an image leapt to mind.  She smirked in challenge, spun to face the ground, and plummeted.

Wings a rapid blur and color bleeding into the sky behind her, Scootaloo turned sharply to the side and slightly upwards, feeling her bones rattle from the force, gritting her teeth to keep them from clacking.  Twenty feet forward, she almost entirely reversed direction, aiming towards the ground back the way she came.

Another twenty feet, she sharply turned up again, then back down, heading almost straight for the ground.  Fifty feet down and watching the blades of grass grow distinct, she slammed her wings and rocketed straight up.  Back in the sky, she made four more violent and aggressive turns, drawing aches to her joints and ringing to her ears.

At her original height, she leveled herself parallel with the ground and raced to her starting point, catching the fading fire of her flight trail.

She flew away and flared her wings, eyes trained on what she had drawn in the sky.

Suspended in the air, outlined in shaky and crude flames, the angles off in places, and the whole thing slightly crooked, stood the Wonderbolt’s double-bend lightning bolt symbol.  It was awkward and amateurish, and her trail was already fading from the first half.  But it was hers.  
She
had made it.

It was perfect.

As she looked, hovering in stillness and watching the mark fade, the determined gaze of Rainbow’s father, challenging and fierce, full of strength, full of pride, filled her mind.  “This was for you,” she whispered.

A blinding flash lit up the sky.

Scootaloo whirled in place, looking for the source of light, finding it always behind her.  She looked over her shoulder.

The glow faded slowly from her flanks.  A lightning bolt with two bends made of purple fire raced down her leg.

Scootaloo whipped around in a blur to find Rainbow Dash, fifty yards away and slightly higher, hovering in place.  She flapped with all her strength and exploded through the air, color pouring from her hooves, rocketing with all her might straight at her coach.

Her voice, full of endless joy, rebounded throughout all of Ponyville.  
“I got my cutie mark!”

She careened into Rainbow Dash at full speed.  The pair tumbled away, a whirling ball of hooves, feathers, and giggles.  Rainbow’s wings flared and she regained control, hugging Scootaloo to her chest.  “That was awesome,” Rainbow marveled, “I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m so
happy
.”  She hugged tighter, wrapped in Rainbow’s legs.

“Hey, Scoots,” Rainbow said, a hint of challenging mischief in her voice, “Wanna race?”

Scootaloo pulled away and immediately shot off, cackling.  Rainbow darted to catch up and they blasted through the air, side by side, looping a giant circle over the park.

Rainbow was always a single beat in front of her.  For every minute increase in speed Scootaloo could put on, Rainbow matched it, pulling forward, giving the filly a goal, the next limit to push through.  Her small wings buzzed angrily in the more and more turbulent sky.  Pockets of different air pressures, crosswinds, and temperature fluctuations battered Scootaloo’s body.  Her back began to burn from the exertion, but she pushed on, compensating for the rough air, always increasing, always reaching for the mare just in the lead.

It was a hopeless battle.  Rainbow’s larger wings, the perfect size and shape for speed and attached to a pony with over a decade of elite training, would always be a flap ahead of her.  Scootaloo didn’t care.  She was free, free of the ground, free of struggling, free of the words and numbers that jumbled up in her head, with an endless and open sky stretching away in every direction.

She hit her body’s limit.  Her wings shuddered violently and refused to go faster.  She strained her eyes forward, reaching for Rainbow with all her strength.  Her flight path began to waver in the high, buffering winds.

Rainbow Dash fell back a foot and darted sideways, sweeping the flagging filly into her legs.  Scootaloo grinned, feeling her aching wings pressed into Rainbow’s chest, watching the sky in front of them.  Rainbow beat her wings faster.  The very air began to bend as Scootaloo watched.

Five more beats and the world exploded.

The air was ripped asunder, fleeing from in front of the pair as sound, light, and color flooded everything.  Scootaloo’s eyes vibrated in her skull and her ears rang.  The massive, concussive, reality-destroying shred in the sky thundered all around them, staining the world with too much vibrancy, too much clarity.

Scootaloo was in the heart of a sonic rainboom, and it shook her to her core.

They blazed through space, faster than the filly had ever been, faster than she could imagine.  And her mind was clear and blank, filled only with the raw, overwhelming
magic
of the rainboom.  They circled back, slowly dropping in speed, watching the rough blur of Ponyville regain focus.  Scootaloo twisted in Rainbow’s embrace and hugged her tight.

“Thank you,” she whispered over the wind.

Rainbow glided to a stable hover, holding the filly, stroking her mane.  “I said I’d take you flying.”

“It’s more than I could ever dream!” she cried.  Her goggles began to fog up from the inside, her eyes stinging from the pure exhilaration.  She roughly pulled them off to hang around her neck and re-strengthened her hug.  Her heart was bursting, her mind an inarticulate buzz of nothing and everything all at once.  “It was
perfect!
  Better’n perfect!”  She squeezed with all her might.  “I love you, Rainbow Dash!”

Scootaloo froze.  Her eyes grew wide and she forgot how to breathe, trying to wrap her head around what she had just said.  She mentally screamed at herself, she cringed, she shook with guilt and fear.  
‘Nononono, I didn’t say that…’
  Scootaloo pulled away to flee.  She crossed a line, she knew she had, she needed to get away.

Rainbow’s hooves wouldn’t let her go.

She twisted and squirmed, blathering, “I’m sorry, Rainbow, I shouldn’t have said that, you’ve been so great, I wasn’t thinking, I—” In her struggles, she brushed her forehead against Rainbow’s cheek, and her brow came away wet.  She stilled immediately and lifted her gaze, her eyes wide and disbelieving.  She whispered, “Are…are you crying?”

Rainbow buried her face in Scootaloo’s mane, holding her close and sniffling loudly.  “I cried for you, you know.  When Mrs. Taker took you that day, I started crying as soon as the door shut, and didn’t stop ‘til you came back.”

Scootaloo couldn’t make herself breathe, so she held still against Rainbow’s chest.

“I thought I was never gonna see you again.  If she had her way, it would’ve been the last time I ever saw you, Scoots.  I cried and cried into Twilight’s chest.  I was so afraid...and there wasn’t anything we could really do.  Maybe, if things got really bad for you, we could’ve...It didn’t come to that, but it hurt
so much
to think you were gone.”

“Rainbow…” Scootaloo murmured.

“I love you, too, Scoots.  With all my heart.  You’re the family I lost.”

Scootaloo closed her eyes as tears streamed down her face.

“Listen,” Rainbow said, her voice rough, “Twi’ and me’ve been talking, and…if you want it...we want you to come live with us.  We, uh, we’ll need some time to get it all set up, but we have a room for you with us.  A home with us.  You…you don’t have to call me or Twi’ mom, or anything, but we’ll take care of you.  We can be a family.”

Scootaloo’s heart ached.  She hugged Rainbow harder, as tight as her powerful little legs could squeeze, crushingly, desperately, maniacally hard.  “I’ve never been so happy,” she choked out through her sobs.  Rainbow stroked her mane slowly as burning, relieved tears fled her body, a ragged and infected wound in her soul slowly being ripped away piece by piece.

In the sky, Scootaloo found freedom.  In Rainbow’s embrace, Scootaloo found a place where she belonged.

Sniffling loudly, Scootaloo whispered, “Rainbow?”