[Ponyville] Flying Lessons for Royalty [closed - ask for invite]

[Bramble Rose]

Rainbow Dash let out a soft *eep* and her wings froze outwards for a moment as she watched Fluttershy crash ... and then let out a sigh of relief as she saw her oldest friend pop her head out of the clouds, her wings starting up again as she let out her squeaky laugh, a nervous release of the brief fear. "Nice crash, Fluttershy! Not quite up to the level of my crashes, of course, but solid delivery, and good follow-through!"

Then her eyes widened as Twilight went through the course without even breaking a sweat, not fighting the winds so much as surfing them, using them to her advantage, with the ease of somepony whose instincts had taken over. She gave Derpy a quick high-hoof and circled around to land near Twilight and Fluttershy. "All right, Twilight! That was perfect! Good job! I thought you were going to be stuck overthinking things for much longer. Can't think too much in flying - just gotta react and go with it! Way to go!"

She slapped Twilight on the shoulder, grinning happily and ignoring the whole whatever-it-was she was saying about flight theory and some sort of model. Pfft. Scholars. What do they know about flying?

"I knew as soon as you got past that huge brain of yours, you'd be an awesome flyer! But if you want to move past flying, sure, we can try something else!" She looked over to Derpy. "Hey, did you see any stray little storm-clouds floating around that might have broken off that lightning storm we had last weekend? We could teach her to start corralling them!"

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[Bellosh]

"Hey, did you see any stray little storm-clouds floating around that might have broken off that lightning storm we had last weekend? We could teach her to start corralling them!"

When Twilight Sparkle went to help Fluttershy after her crash, Derpy Hooves was relieved to see that the animal caretaker didn’t suffer from a spontaneous aging injury. True, colliding with a cloud logically should not cause somepony to grow a beard, but one should always be on the lookout for when the world decided to throw logic out the window. The Everfree Forest served as living proof of Equestria’s inherent wackiness.

Because Twilight passed her test with flying colors, Rainbow Dash decided to take things to the next level. “There should be a storm remnant due east of here,” Derpy informed her superior; “Where the Whitetail Wood bashes up against the Roundbottom Hills. You want me to bring the pieces back here?”

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[Bramble Rose]

"Oh, there's some left from that storm? Awesome, that's just perfect!" Dash grinned excitedly. "Gather 'em up, Derpy, and bring 'em back here!" Dash affirmed. "But try not to let too much of the lightning out!" Dash rethought her command a little bit, but figured it should be safe enough. There'd been plenty of rain lately, there weren't any dry grasslands... very few buildings...

[Corsair]

Fluttershy struggled a bit, trying to free her hind legs from the cloud wall. Finally, with an almost audible *pop*, she was airborne again. She then flopped onto a nearby cloud to catch her breath. She wasn't sure who was getting more of a workout from this, her or Twilight!

The yellow pegasus blushed a bit as Rainbow 'complemented' her crash, but she couldn't help but giggle a little as well. Celestia knew she'd seen enough of Rainbow Dash's crash landings! Feeling a little brave, she looked up at Rainbow and said "Oh, n-no, I could never measure up to y-your crashes, Rainbow Dash!" She tried to imitate one of Rainbow's confident smiles, but she didn't know how well she pulled it off. A part of her really wanted to apologize immediately, but she fought to hold it back. Friends were allowed to tease each other like that, right?

She was distracted from her worries by a flash of lavender in the sky above her. Looking over, Fluttershy's jaw dropped as Twilight executed a near-perfect glide through the winds, landing next to her. She was still feeling stunned as the alicorn removed some cloud from her chin... How long has that been there? "I... I'm fine, Twilight," she said, still looking up at the cloud the alicorn had launched from. "Twilight, that was great!" Fluttershy finally managed, just as her friend seemed to realize what she had done.

When Rainbow Dash asked Derpy about storms, Fluttershy was confused for a moment. Then, she realized what her friend must be thinking. "Oh, are you going to have Twilight try working with the weather?" she asked. The yellow pegasus flew up, positioning herself away and behind Rainbow. "I... I think I'll just watch this part. I'm not very good with rain clouds..."

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[SteelEagle]

Praise came from two landmarks of the sphere of friendship, forcing Twilight into a blush. She had handled praise for her magical talents often enough that it did not strike her odd there but a simple glide was equally deserving considering her natural skills there were equaled by a foal's. It felt good though. Once she had turned off her over-analytical brain she had been able to glide on the current effectively and leisurely, just as she had always been led to believe. It was hard not over-thinking things for her, though. She was just naturally inclined to the over-thinking process. Ten times as much analytical thought cascaded through her bustling mind and imagination than it did through others. Turning that off was akin to trying to stop the flow of a mighty river. It was only when her friends were in dire trouble that it seemed she could summon the willpower to act rather than think. For that, she was grateful.

"Well, I'm only able to do this because of the great teachers I have. Thank you, everypony," Twilight offered sincerely, taking flight once more and hovering next to Rainbow Dash as the next stage of her training was announced.

Weather control was one of the innate magical powers that the pegasi had. Every pegasi had some measure of it. Some were far more talented and powerful at it than others while a large percentage of the populace had affinity and skills in other areas. No matter what though, they all had it and those that had talent spent a significant period of their life learning to harness it. Twilight would likely not have such talent at her feathertips but she would naturally possess some measure of weather control. There was a possibility that she would possess a great deal of of it- being an alicorn made her a near paragon of natural ability across the board. None of that mattered if she didn't put the work in to make that ability apparent and she wouldn't put such emphasis on it. She would live for a long, long, long time. She would have time. She was more relieved than anything that this was next, as it was a magical task. Aural control and aetheral connections were just as important here as it was in spell casting. She could do this.

"Oooh, weather control? I'd very excited to feel what it's like to be inside a shelf cloud before and dring a storm!" Twilight clapped her hooves excitedly as she hovered, imagining that. Pegasi were so lucky!

[Bellosh]

“Aye aye, captain!” Derpy Hooves saluted for the final time, “See you guys real soon!” Tasked with an important purpose, the gray pegasus took her leave, setting off towards the direction of the storm remnant. When Derpy returned, she’d have brought back the best storm cloud ever used for training purposes.....

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*DERPY HOOVES IS ON STAND-BY*

[Bramble Rose]

Rainbow Dash watched Derpy head off with a bit of trepidation, but then shrugged. It'd be all right, she was sure. Then she grinned at Twilight. "Oh, it's great! Just wait 'til the first time you swerve around lightning. It's *awesome!*" Her voice squeaked in her excitement, and she zipped off to grab one of the many clouds she'd left laying around. As she brought it back by the other two ponies, she tore a third of it off and kicked it over to float next to Fluttershy. "Here, Shy - just start tearing it into little bits." She demonstrated by lazing on the rest of the cloud, reaching down into it, and scooping out a hoofball-sized mini-cloud.

She continued like that, making mini-cloud after mini-cloud, as she explained to Twilight, "All right, while we're waiting for her, let's go over the basics. This next part is somethin' that pegasus fillies sometimes have problems with, when they're first learning - kicking a cloud. It's the main way we deal with weather, is by kicking it around." She started lining up the mini-clouds in rows, as she made them. "And they keep trying to find what's different about the kicks, but there's really nothing different physically. It's all mental. When you're kicking a cloud, you need to focus on what you want to happen - right now, we're gonna swap between the two easiest. Moving a cloud, and breaking up a cloud. Breaking it up is easiest, but it's both just a kick." She had three lines now, each one with half-a-dozen little hoofball-sized clouds. "All right. First row, just start trying to break them up. Kick the cloud and try to destroy it! Then go to the second row, and try to move them, instead. Give 'em a kick to send 'em flying like hoofballs. Let's see how well you do just by instinct. I figure it's probably kinda like usin' yer horn t'do different spells even though it glows the same way, but since I'm not a princess with a fancy horn of my own, you'll have to tell me!"

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[Corsair]

Fluttershy watched with trepidation as Derpy flew off. For all of the grey pegasus' good intentions, she... didn't have a good reputation when it came to storm clouds... Fluttershy herself had only really dealt with storm clouds once, in flight camp, and that was enough for her. Pegusii were resistant to the static discharges, of course, and could even be struck by full-fledged lightning, but it was still unpleasant to say the least. Not to mention the loud, frightening sound that accompanied lightning... Fluttershy recalled a visit to the weather factory when she was a filly. After visiting the storm assembly room, it had taken her parents a long time to convince her that it was safe... and to come out from under the rainbow vat where she had hidden...

Twlight, at least, seemed very enthusiastic about learning some weather control. Of course, the alicorn was enthusiastic about learning anything. But here, Fluttershy didn't really have much to contribute. Rainbow was the expert. Fluttershy took the cloud that Rainbow passed her, and began breaking it up into small clumps as instructed. This, at least, was easy. Clouds were very mailable in a pegasus' hooves. She moved down the line, setting up targets for Twilight.

The yellow pegasus looked down at the cloud in her hooves. Funny, the cloud almost looked like a bunny! She started smoothing the edges of the cloud, deliberately shaping it. She gave the cloud bunny long pointy ears, and used an especially fluffy piece as a tail. She began humming to herself as she worked, not even noticing if Rainbow and Twilight were watching her...

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[SteelEagle]

"All right, while we're waiting for her, let's go over the basics. This next part is somethin' that pegasus fillies sometimes have problems with, when they're first learning - kicking a cloud. It's the main way we deal with weather, is by kicking it around. And they keep trying to find what's different about the kicks, but there's really nothing different physically. It's all mental. When you're kicking a cloud, you need to focus on what you want to happen - right now, we're gonna swap between the two easiest. Moving a cloud, and breaking up a cloud. Breaking it up is easiest, but it's both just a kick. All right. First row, just start trying to break them up. Kick the cloud and try to destroy it! Then go to the second row, and try to move them, instead. Give 'em a kick to send 'em flying like hoofballs. Let's see how well you do just by instinct. I figure it's probably kinda like usin' yer horn t'do different spells even though it glows the same way, but since I'm not a princess with a fancy horn of my own, you'll have to tell me!"

Twilight couldn't help but be excited by the prospect of controlling the weather with the effectiveness of the pegasi. It was one of the innumerable advantages of being an Equestrian was that you had control of some element of nature and you had an active part to play ion how the nation operated. Pegasi had the most obvious example of that, controlling the weather and manipulating cloud cover to produce very fine results for the rest of the nation to enjoy. She had always enjoyed the direct manipulation of the aetheral leylines of Equestria that came with the use of a unicorn spell, and not just for what she was capable o doing because of it. There was something thrilling about the prospect of directly impacting the world around you. She made sure to follow Rainbow Dash as she laid out what to do, taking in her teaching with all of the excitement she had once reserved mostly for Celestia's private lessons. The most important thing was to realize that unlike Celestia who could answer the minute aetheral implications of what she was teaching, Dash was more cause and effect centric. That made it easier to learn, at least.

Twilight flew up to the lines.

“Hmm, now that you mention it DOES sound like magical training! Visualization is actually the cornerstone of most magical spells. The ability to alter the aetheral flow using the aural inflection and dispersal rate is a skill and a talent, but most of the time visualization as the aetheral flow is altered by your aural dispersal rate filling up the intertia gaps of the aetheral hole in the flow allows you to cast simple spells! The same concept applies here! I can do this!” Twilight explained in a manner nopony could understand or follow, fluttering into position. She reversed position and lined up at the lower line. Here, all she had to do was destroy them. Simple enough. Easier than moving. She could feel the small aural alterations at play as her aura seemingly folded around the sky around her, touching and cuddling the clouds lazily. She had to stop herself from thinking too much more on it, however. She was already running the risk of alienating those around her with excessive jargon.

She visualized not a nice, fluffy, happy cloud full of life but a barren and empty landscape where that cloud once lived after a violent collision with her hooves. She reared up and kicked the cloud. Then the next. And then the next. Each kick was quicker than the last as she managed to move swifter and swifter with her mental processes, the imagination needed to do the job lessened with every attack. Then she shot up to the second row- moving. A little different but the process was the same. She was so excited to be doing it, so excited to be learning, that she started to pay less attention to her surroundings. That and she was far more powerful than she believed. Maybe it was Earth Pony strength. Likely it was simply just alicorn strength. But as she envisioned the clouds being moved, she hadn't really set a clear destination in mind for them. Just a cloud in flight coming to a stop in the sky somewhere. Without a set destination the clouds were sent rocketing off into the distance as if shot from an airship's fluffy cannon. One after another were launched wildly, indiscriminately...and then she came to the final one in the line shaped like a bunny and gave it the mightiest kick of all.

[Bramble Rose]

Rainbow Dash's cloud chunks were not very carefully made - just random sized chunks ripped off and tossed into place. All they needed to be, really - but Fluttershy's soft music got her attention, and she smiled to see her seeming so content. It was kinda rare - Fluttershy was always so timid around other ponies, you usually only saw her this content when you surprised her - when she thought she was alone with a bunch of animals.

But Dash had to bring her attention back to the training - Twilight had started on the first row! Good, not a problem - but the first row was the easy one. Dash nodded sagely to herself. A row of clouds she could destroy, to help build her up - so that once she started having problems with the second row, at least she wouldn't feel that there was NOTHING she was good at. As long as she didn't get too good at destroying clouds ... Dash remembered when she was young, and starting this sort of training, there had been that time she'd kicked in her sleep and dissipated her whole bed. Then there was a few months where it felt like she couldn't land without the clouds exploding away under her hooves, sending her tumbling towards the ground far below. One week she just stopped landing entirely, floating even when she was supposed to be sitting at her desk in primaries school. Even now she didn't like putting her hooves down...

She prepared her words of reassurance as Twilight came up to the second row ... and ducked as one little cloud puff went zipping right for her head. She dodged left, twisted right, the clouds barely missing her wings and hooves as she twisted herself into improbable poses trying to dodge all the flying little clouds. "Whoah! Hey! Careful! Little bit *eep!* That one nearly took my nose off! Hey now!"

She tried hard not to be a little angry. Or jealous. Or something. She'd had to work at this for weeks! She'd broken down into tears at least once, figuring she'd never make a decent pegasus pony. It had been very hard for her to figure out the difference between destroying a cloud, and just moving it. And it had been months, even years, before she could do it reliably when she was thinking about it.

And here Twilight was, knocking cloud balls out of the park like she'd been doing it all her life. Not that she wanted Twilight to cry or anything, or that she wanted her to fail, but ... why did Twilight have to be so GOOD at EVERYTHING?

As Twilight was reaching the end of the row, Dash saw it coming. Fluttershy, completely unawares, was holding up her little bunny cloud sculpture and admiring it, Twilight was in the zone, exhilarating in how easy it was for her... oh no! Fluttershy would be -

No, she wouldn't.

Dash spread her wings and darted forward, took a few little clouds in the face, rocking left and then right, and dove right in front of Twilight's kick to wrap the cloud bunny up in her hooves and wings, curling around it as she hit the ground and rolled, and coming up a bit scuffed and dirty, laying on her back with the cloud bunny safely resting on her tummy.

There was a few moments of silence. Then Dash said, "Well! Not too bad, Twilight! We might want to work on control, next, but it was ... all right!"

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[Corsair]

Fluttershy hummed contentedly as she molded the cloud. She'd always loved cloud sculpting when she was a filly. Oh, she wasn't an artist or anything; some pegasus ponies actually did make wonderful sculptures out of clouds. No, this was just playing. She'd heard that unicorn and earth pony foals did the same thing with clay or sand, but their creations often couldn't be moved. For a pegasus, cloud sculptures could be played with like any other toy... at least for a while.

She was so absorbed in her task, Fluttershy didn't notice the lavender alicorn getting closer. She didn't even notice the errant cloud puffs that zipped past and over her head. She took three little bits of cloud and compressed them between her hooves until they turned from white to gray. These became the little cloud bunny's eyes and nose. When she held the bunny out in front her, she noticed that it looked like the bunny's front paws were crossed over his chest. With a giggle, she used the tip of her hoof to draw the bunny's mouth into a frown. "I'll call you Angel Bunny Two," she said to her creation with another giggle.

Satisfied, Fluttershy held the white fluffy bunny out in front of her, then left it to float. She smiled up at it for a moment, before suddenly remembering what it was she was supposed to be doing. Her cheeks turned pink with a hint of embarrassment. Here she was playing like a filly, and she was supposed to be helping Twilight! "Oh dear, I better get back to work, Angel Two!" she said. She started to reach for the bunny to put it out of the way, when two things happened at once: Twilight Sparkle suddenly flew right in front of her, the alicorn's hooves poised for a kick! But before either pony realized what was happening, a familiar blue blur with a rainbow streak flashed between them.

Fluttershy jumped back with an "Eeep!" as her mane was blown by the wind of Rainbow's passage. Turning her head, she winced as she saw the other pegasus' body tumble across the ground. Rainbow finally uncurled revealing... Fluttershy's cloud bunny. It took a moment for Fluttershy's mind to process what had happened. Twilight had been kicking clouds... kicking clouds...

Fluttershy's jaw dropped open when she realized what Rainbow had done. She flew over to her friend, helping her back to her hooves. "Oh my goodness! Rainbow, are you OK?" she asked, checking over her friend's injuries. Seeing no more than dirt and scrapes, she felt relieved, but then flashed to embarrassment. Taking the bunny from Rainbow, she muttered "Er, um... thank you..." not meeting the blue pegasus' eyes...

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[SteelEagle]

Twilight was more than pleased with this whole endeavor. She had known to a certain degree that her talents and training in the realm of magic would help her in some ways with her flight training but she never imagined it would be quite this effective. Cloud kicking and cloud moving had all the hallmarks of basic pre-illusionary studies into the aetheral flow. She had conquered that many years ago in the chambers of her youth through rigorous effort and a great deal of time. She knew what she was doing. She just didn't think that it would be this easy to transfer over the basic lessons of her youth. Visualization of the process was a pillar of both schools and she had a hoof up by her mastery of one. She kicked and kicked and kicked to her heart's content, the thrill of learning eclipsed by the thrill of overwhelming success for a brief moment in time.

Of course, it seemed as though she had gone too far...by a bit. She was having too much kicking the clouds, the feeling of the small wisps of form sliding away into tinier and tinier fragments until finally they were nothing intoxicating as they were the feeling of success. As she approached the final one, her legs on near automatic, she heard only the barest warning being delivered. Her hooves cracked against something but it was nearly impossible to tell in the fierce rush of air behind her, the speed of whatever happened such that a second later she was twirled in place. After a few spins she stopped, falling a few feet in the air as she dizzily worked to get her wings back into functionality. She powered herself back up to where she was and shook herself free of the cobwebs that had been deposited because of the spin, only then taking stock of what happened.

Rainbow Dash was on the ground, her trajectory of descent starting where the cloud had once been. Across from Twilight was Fluttershy, who looked a little stunned and confused. It didn't take a great detective to figure out what had happened and the implications made Twilight's ears droop in shame and embarassment. She must have gotten so carried away that she was about to kick Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash flew in to save her, catching the cloud in the process! Twilight's hooves flew, pun intended to her mouth as she gasped in shock, following Fluttershy to her fallen friend. Thankfully Rainbow Dash seemed okay aside from a few bruises but that didn't make Twilight feel any better, How could she be so reckless? So careless? Clearly while she had the capability to be great at it she did not have the brain for it. She was lesser than her skills because of flaws in herself and because of her actions somepony had gotten hurt. It was dash so of course she'd be okay, but if it were just about any other pony...

Twilight hovered not far from Rainbow Dash as she told Twi to take care next time. All Twilight could do was nod behind her hooves before she fluttered to the ground and went down on all fours, anguish on her face.

“No, it was NOT all right Rainbow! I almost hurt you! I could seriously hurt somepony with these things all because I was being careless and was so caught up in the thrill of it all!” Her ears drooped even lower, as did her eyes, “I..think I'm done for today. A least until I can stop being so reckless...”

[Bramble Rose]

Rainbow Dash grinned proudly to Fluttershy, giving up the little cloud bunny to her friend's reaching hooves. "No problem, Fluttershy! Nice work on that little guy. He's got Angel's look, that's for sure!" She got to her hooves and brushed herself off with one wing, then looked up as Twilight started panicking.

She frowned at Twilight's self-recriminations. "Whoah, whoah, whoah. Twilight. Of COURSE you're caught up in this! This sort of stuff is *AWE*some! And you're gonna be awesome, too! But first you gotta get all those mistakes and crashes and near-misses and stuff out of the way!"

She reached out, grabbed Fluttershy, and pulled her close. "See Fluttershy here? She knows that everything you do is dangerous. Going out the front door is dangerous - you could trip into somepony and hurt them! Or making dinner is dangerous! You could accidentally burn down your tree! Anything you do might hurt somepony or yourself! That's why you PRACTICE! So that you get all those accidents and oopses and stuff out of your system, so that when it really counts, you know you can count on yourself. You can't just give up because you haven't made a bad mistake yet, but you *might*!"

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