Author's Note: Good lord, I need to write this faster… seriously, I wrote like 200 words a day for this chapter because I'm getting more and more distracted.

On the bright side, I got a new kitten! :3

Soaring Heart the Pegasus- Funnily enough, that's going to be brought up in this chapter, so good timing. And yes, of course there will be some Flying! I'm pleased you like the concept of Flying though- I think it's the most interesting thing my retarded little brain has come up with to date. Though, I can't take all the credit; flying was inspired by the fusion dances in Steven Universe. Facts with Sassymouse.

Amellia Rose- Thank goodness! It's a big relief that you don't mind shorter chapters because they put a lot less pressure on me, and it makes it easier to speed the story along. Sometimes it's nice to have a small chapter- it's more relaxing than having to read something that's 45,000 words long… *shifty eyes*.

Captain Alaska- I can be funny even when I'm not trying to be. I forgot how fun it was to write drill sergeant Spitty! :D

Luna'snight625- Poor guy- at least he tries his best. And there will certainly be a lot of drama *sigh* I never thought we'd reach a point where the Spitfire/Braeburn plotline was the least dramatic one. xD

Drunkenness- Patience my friend. Also, it seems you have some internalized shipping desires of some sort there.

---

"So there's an election to see who's going to be the captain of a fake Wonderbolts team?" Braeburn asked, cleaning one of the ovens. After training was done for the day and everypony had finished eating dinner, Rainbow Dash, Lullaby, Sugar Swoop and Cinder had gone into the kitchen at Rainbow's request so she could tell Soarin and Braeburn about the events of the day.

"That's right," Rainbow nodded, watching as Cinder sat at the side of the sink, washing dishes. It was kinda adorable how she had to climb on the counters whenever she had to clean them or set out ingredients. "It's gonna be a pretty boring competition though- only Spring Song and I signed up in the end." She thought back to the end of the first set of drills, when both she and Spring Song had signed their names on the sheet outside Spitfire's office. It was probably the most pathetic sign-up sheet she had ever seen.

"You mean flamingo-flanks?" Soarin looked up from his Pie Digest magazine with a simper. He'd been totally hooked on it all day, so much that he had almost forgotten to do his paperwork for the day. He definitely didn't need Spitfire or Silver Lining busting his butt about that! Though maybe if he was lucky, Spitfire wouldn't have been so hard on him anyway; judging by Braeburn's story of what had transpired yesterday when he had gone to speak to the captain, her mood was going to improve drastically. Brae had probably done all of them a big favor by wooing the golden pegasus.

"Pfft. Flamingo-flanks?" Sugar Swoop echoed from his spot to the left of Rainbow Dash at the table. "That's a pretty creative nickname… why didn't you think of it, Lullaby?"

Lullaby, who was sitting on the other side of Rainbow Dash, looked across at her peach-coated friend with a raised eyebrow. "Oh I'm sorry- how long have I been the go-to Nickname Generator?" she asked snarkily. "Considering that I always call everyone by their full name I'm the worst pony for the job. You're better off asking Cinder than me."

Cinder called over from the other side of the room, "She's right! I sometimes call Braeburn 'Hillybilly' and Soarin is 'Briar Patch' because he wears too much hair gel." She explained. Rainbow suppressed a laugh as she checked out Soarin's mane, realising for the first time just how much it really did look like a briar patch. Soarin raised a brow and self-consciously lifted a hoof to his spiked mane.

"Hey, I don't use too much… I just use as much as I need to get it to look perfect. Sometimes I just get a little out of control is all." He insisted, turning a little pink at being called out for his hair issues. He then got the genius idea to change the subject. "I still say that we get Spring Song kicked out of the academy. We should all work together to make a list of all the cruddy things Spring Song's done to all of you, give it to Spitfire, and then she can wave her magic wand and bibbidi-bobbidy-boo her clear off of Cloudsdale."

Rainbow groaned and trotted over to Soarin, who was sitting right next to the serving counter. She leaned against Soarin and smooshed her cheek against his shoulder. "Nah that would be cowardly; I can't just get her kicked out, Soarin. That's just as bad as losing this little fight with her. Getting her kicked out would be cheating… not to mention it's kinda pathetic and wimpy." She added that last part with a deadpan expression.

Lullaby giggled and crossed her arms, smirking over at Rainbow Dash. "Whatever you say Dash, but at least you didn't wet yourself last mon- OOPS!" Lullaby slapped her hooves across her mouth, her eyes popping open. Everypony in the room (aside from Braeburn, who was in the food storage room) slowly rotated their heads to look at Lullaby, who at this point had broken into a cold sweat.

"Excuse me?" Rainbow asked, wiggling her ears a little just in case something had gotten stuck in them. Lullaby shifted her eyes from side to side before taking her hooves away from her mouth.

"Um… can we just pretend I didn't say anything? Seriously I will pay you to ignore every syllable that came out of my mouth." She looked at Rainbow Dash with urgency. Naturally, Rainbow Dash wanted to know more about Lullaby's little slip of the tongue.

"Spring Song peed herself?" Rainbow puffed up her cheeks to try and hold her laughter in. There was no way this was true, right? Lullaby had to be pulling her leg with this! The purple pegasus clopped her front hooves together nervously and bit down on her bottom lip.

"Well it was over a month ago… and she hasn't done it since… and she isn't having nightmares anymore… so that's a good thing right, okay let's move on with our-"

"She peed though." Rainbow repeated, her voice tinged with disbelief. Lullaby sighed with defeat and rolled her eyes as far back into her head as they would go, wondering when the day would come that she would roll her eyes so much that they got an asthma attack and died.

"Okay yes, she wet herself. But she had a right to!" Lullaby defended her 'patient'. She was dedicated to her budding psychology career and because of that she was bound by an oath not to reveal anything about their patients that the patient themselves did not want to be shared. Even if Spring Song was a brute on occasion, that was no reason to break that oath. Well… it wouldn't hurt to reveal the obvious fact, she supposed... What?! It's not like she was a real psychologist yet.

"Alright, so she started having nightmares about being in the Storm Cloud Cluster not long after… well you know." Lullaby gestured at Rainbow Dash, who by this point was just used to being reminded of that traumatic event. Well, she wasn't exactly traumatised by it because she had been through so much worse while on missions with her friends to save Equestria. She'd had her mind twisted by Discord! She'd had her pegasus magic drained from her body by Tirek! What was getting struck by lightning compared to that? It's not like it was uncommon for pegasi to get struck by lightning anyhow… okay, it was dangerous and to be honest she probably needed to start taking this kind of thing seriously. Maybe this was one of those delayed reactions. Like, maybe one day in the future Rainbow Dash would wake up and her brain would be full of static.

"Keep talking," Rainbow leaned against Soarin some more and made a gesture with a forehoof for Lullaby to continue. The purple pegasus sighed and crossed her arms.

"That's all there is to say really. It kinda scarred her and she needed some psychological help. Paradise got me to help her out she's all better now. End of story." Lullaby made a horizontal slicing motion through the air with a hoof, showing that she was completely done with this conversation. Rainbow hummed to herself and felt her ears droop. Should she feel guilty right about now?

"Damn, I was making fun of her for this…" she muttered. Sugar Swoop spoke up from his spot at the table.

"Hey Dash, she deserves this. Are you forgetting all the crummy crap she pulled on you?" he asked. Lullaby slapped her stallion friend on his shoulder, getting him to let out a whinny of pain. He sneered at her and rubbed his shoulder where she had hit him. "Easy there Lullaby, you've got quite the arm on you."

"Sugar Swoop, you're extremely cruel. This kind of trauma can affect a pony for the rest of their life! If not treated properly by a professional (aka, moi) then this could damage Spring Song beyond repair!" she tried to tell Sugar Swoop just how dire the situation was. Sugar Swoop still wasn't convinced.

"You don't think she deserves this even a little bit?" he asked, shifting his chair away from Lullaby a little bit in case she decided to hit him again. Lullaby sighed and narrowed her eyes.

"Nopony deserves this, Sugar Swoop." She groaned. "The pain Spring Song feels is much different than the pain you're used to. Imagine that instead of the lightning bolt striking her body like it did with Rainbow Dash, it struck her mind instead." It sucked that she was the only pony around here who seemed to realise just how severe mental damage was. It was much worse than physical pain in her opinion, since the kind of pain that occurred inside one's head was much harder to cure. She thanked Celestia that her own mental issues didn't go beyond mild OCD.

"I don't wanna talk about this anymore," Rainbow mumbled, not all that fond of feeling sympathy for Spring Song, no matter how minimal it was.

"Yeah, we were talking about the election for captain," Soarin agreed, "how the heck did we wind up talking about Spring Song's bizarre head trauma anyway?"

"You called her "Flamingo-Flanks." Cinder replied.

"Oh… right."

---

The election quickly became the primary thing on the cadets' minds. The following day when the cadets went out to the runway to line up for combat training to wait for Silver Lining and Fire Streak to come outside, Spring Song was already passing out some pretty expensive looking red velvet cupcakes with fake edible gems on them. Spring Song was leading Paradise (who had the box of cupcakes balanced on her back) down the line, cheerfully inviting the other cadets to take a cake- Rainbow Dash firmly believed that the only reason they were eating the cupcakes was so they would have a sugar boost for training… which was why she felt a twinge of agony when Spring Song and Paradise walked straight past her.

Rainbow Dash looked at the ground forlornly. "I know that she got me struck by lightning, but I think this is the most she's made me sting so far." She was only half-joking.

"Oh, you can live without a cupcake." Lullaby said as she bit into her own one. Hypocrite much, Rainbow thought.

"I had no idea that this election was going to be taken so seriously." Cinder watched as Paradise almost dropped the cupcakes on the ground and Spring Song snapped at her. Ray, who was standing next to Cinder, looked down at the little blue mare.

"It's because she's got somepony to run against- she's gonna be throwing her money around until the election ends." He sighed. It was rather easy for him to grow tired of Spring Song showing off.

"But you guys are totally gonna vote for me so I can rub it in Spring Song's face, right?" Rainbow Dash glanced at Lullaby and Sugar swoop, who stood to the right of her, and then at Cinder and Ray on her right.

"Of course," Sugar Swoop scoffed, "I thought that much was obvious." He commented. Rainbow couldn't argue with him. If she were a voter in this situation then she'd definitely vote for her too.

Lullaby and Cinder agreed instantly… however, the two of them and Sugar Swoop (and Rainbow Dash herself) were a little surprised when Ray didn't agree with them and stayed silent. Staying silent was nothing new for Ray when he was within earshot of Spring Song, but the others had at least hoped for a nod. Was that too much to ask?

"Ray!" Lullaby huffed, glaring daggers at the yellow stallion. Ray shrugged his shoulders and glared right back at his fellow cadet.

"What?!" he snapped, turning his gaze to Rainbow Dash instead. "Dash, you and Spring Song are both my friends, and I really hate the idea of having to choose between the two of you." He was relieved that he had gotten over his crush on Rainbow Dash… for the most part anyway. That would have seriously made his decision biased. But, in his opinion, elections were always easier when you didn't have a romantic interest in one or more of the competitors.

Lullaby groaned and turned her nose up in the air, giving Ray a judgemental side-glance. "How can you stand to be friends with somepony like her anyway?" she asked curiously. Ray completely danced around the question.

"I just don't know who I want to vote for yet, alright?" he returned his stare to Lullaby, glowering at her as if he were challenging her to say something else. "I'll make up my mind on my own! Uh… thank you." He added for extra measure, never liking it when he sounded too cruel. "I don't want to come off as horrible to either of you… if I vote for Rainbow Dash, then I'll lose two of my friends… and if I vote for Spring Song then… well, uh… it may cost us a good captain." He looked pointedly at Rainbow Dash.

Well then, at least she knew who Ray wanted to vote for now.

---

The day after that, Rainbow Dash and Cinder walked out to the training grounds with some mini apple pies that Braeburn and Cinder had made for her to help her out in her campaign. Personally, Rainbow Dash felt like the rule that baked goods were meant to increase your chances of winning something were stupid, and she didn't know how the quality of the cakes a contender could get made any difference in whether they were good for the job or not.

So Rainbow Dash decided to think of this as charity. She wasn't trying to win over anypony's affection with sugary treats; she was just giving out food because she was nice, and that was a trait of a great leader. So neither she nor her friends told anypony to vote for her as the goodies were passed out to the line of cadets. Nevertheless, as she walked past Beau, she heard her mutter that she was going to vote for her.

When the cadets went inside for their break before the second half of training, Smart Set and Free Fall approached Rainbow Dash mid-way through a conversation with Lullaby.

"Um… Dash, we need to confide in you about something. And we don't want you to get angry at us…" Smart Set began. Free Fall sighed and stepped in front of Smart Set, who looked down at the ground with shame.

"We aren't going to vote for you." He confessed. Lullaby and Sugar Swoop looked at the two stallions as if they were speaking in some kind of fictional language. Rainbow's ears sprung up.

"Why?!" she exclaimed, beginning to feel a little furious. It wasn't until after the words were out of her mouth that she realised that what she had said may have sounded a little too mean. But then again, there was no way they would actually come to tell her that they were not voting for her unless there was more to it than just that.

"Look, Spring Song's really… well she's a jerk." Free Fall stated the obvious. "And she's rich. The point is we're kinda afraid that if we don't disappear Spring Song will get one of her dozen servants to make us disappear."

Rainbow rolled her eyes and softly sighed. She stood up and walked around to stand next to Free Fall, putting one arm around him and giving him a squeeze, which… was pretty hard to do considering that Free Fall had a build that made him feel like he was made of bricks. "C'mon Free Fall, ya can't chicken out of something like this. You're a big, strong stallion, a fact that you take every opportunity to remind us of, and yet here you are, knocking your knees together because you're afraid of a prissy sissy like Spring Song. We need to teach her a lesson or else she'll never drop this annoying stuck-up act of hers!" she took her arm away from Free Fall so she could pound her hooves together like she was throwing a punch. She then jumped on top of the table (slamming her hind right hoof onto Sugar Swoop's sandwich in the process) and spread her wings.

"Some ponies need to stand up to Spring Song! And if not us, who? If not now, when? And if not then, then… something else! But if we're gonna put an end to her "reign of terror" then we're gonna have to overthrow her! WHO'S WITH ME!" she called… rather loudly. Almost everypony in the room was staring at her as she waited for Smart Set and Free Fall's responses. Her determination quickly evaporated into thin air as the two stallions simply turned and walked away. She let her wings drop to her sides and she jumped off the table, sighing and resting her chin on the surface, hoping that the other ponies would cease their staring so she could get her sulk on. This… was going to be a much bigger problem than she had previously anticipated.

Sugar Swoop then reached over and tapped Rainbow Dash on the shoulder. The rainbow maned pony tilted her head to the right just enough that she could angle her eyes upwards and look at him.

"You owe me a new sandwich."

---

When it was time for dinner in the mess hall, she overheard Beau trying to convince Bumble and Stargazer to vote for Dash. She didn't seem to be having much luck though.

At the same time, Spring Song was blabbing to Cinder and Stains about how they should totally vote for her. Rainbow Dash was appalled when the pink tailhole actually tried to bribe them by saying they could come over to her house and use the Jacuzzi any time they wanted (which sounded like a blatant lie if you asked Dash.)

But the real kicker was when Paradise and Ray fluttered in with large poster. They hung it up on an open space, and touched down so that the rest of the ponies in the mess hall could check it out. The poster was pink all over with Celestia-knows how much glitter all over it. In the centre was a picture of Spring Song's face, looking upwards. One half of the poster was dark pink and the other was light pink, and at the bottom of the posters, in yellow block capitals was the word "VOTE".

"You've gotta be kidding…" Rainbow muttered to herself. She knew that Spring Song had an ego, but this was just ridiculous. It wasn't like she was being elected president… whatever one of those was!

Butternut called Paradise over to her and whispered into her ear, which was a little hard to do since everypony was trying to figure out whether they were supposed to take Spring Song's crazy poster seriously or not. "Did Spring Song really think it was a good idea to make that thing? That thing is much trippy, very whaaa?" Butternut said, putting on her troll-voice for the end of her sentence. Paradise just responded by grinning and looping an arm around the peanut-butter coloured mare.

"Me and Ray put a lot of effort into it, and we had to bribe Stains with my money to get some of her paint, so don't call it trippy!" she hissed, maintaining her grin and pushing her nose against Butternut's, staring into the mare's eyes with her own wide psychopathic ones. Paradise, it seemed, was very sensitive about people criticizing her art. Butternut gulped and nodded her head slowly.

"O-okay, Paradise, I'll never call your art trippy or any other synonym for trippy. 'Cause I'm never gonna give you up, or let you down." A bead of sweat ran down the side of Butternut's face.

Rainbow Dash groaned and left the room, deciding that she'd rather take Soarin to the Hayburger than eat in here with a giant picture of Spring Song's face on the wall. Too much pink and glittery stuff.

---

The following morning before drills, Rainbow Dash caught up to Ray as he was about to head outside to the training grounds to join the others beside the runway. "Hey Ray, buddy, chum, friend, can I talk to you for a sec?" she asked as he opened the door. The yellow stallion sighed and stepped outside, Rainbow Dash following not too far behind, picking up the pace so she could get out the door before it closed... yeah she was pretty lazy when it came to doors.

"I know what you want," Ray gave Rainbow Dash a sideways glance as they headed towards the other cadets. "You want to try and convince me to vote for you again, right?" he already knew the answer of course.

Rainbow shuffled her hooves and little and looked upwards, pretending to be distracted by a peculiar cloud that looked exactly like a woodpecker… actually come to think of it, it looked more like a dragon now- dammit, stop being distracted! She visibly shook herself out of her accidental daze. Ray rolled his eyes and smiled, pleased that despite the competition going on, Rainbow Dash was still her usual funny self.

"Well, my answer's still the same and you can't change it, Dash." He told her, beginning to quicken his pace, feeling like if he talked to her much longer he would just hurt her feelings by refusing to vote. He just wanted everypony to get along, and a contest like this was not going to get the cadets to live in peace and harmony with each other. At least, not until the voting was over anyway…

Rainbow groaned and gave her wings a few frustrated flaps, trotting faster until she was walking next to Ray again. "Please Ray, I need your help. What if… what if Spring Song and I draw and you're the one who has to vote for which one of us wins?" she thought of an intimidating scenario that would get Ray to think very carefully.

Instead of getting an answer, however, Ray just stared at the ground as hard as he could as if staring at it long enough would make Rainbow Dash disappear. Or at the very least she would get bored of waiting for him to say something and move on to give him some personal space. He hated being put on the spot like this.

Rainbow tried to come up with a different plan. "I… I'd owe you a huge favor! Multiple favors if you'd like that! I'd clean your dorm room, I'd… I'd show you some of the aerial tricks Soarin's been teaching me! I'll give you whatever you want. Listen, I have a complete collection of Wonderbolts trading cards, and you can have them all, I swear to Celestia!"

Ray sighed and begrudgingly turned to look Rainbow Dash in the eye, absentmindedly putting a hoof to his hair to check if his spiky Mohawk was out of place at all. "You really want to win that badly?" he asked.

"Yes!" Rainbow Dash said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world… which it kinda was… to her at least. "Yes I do! So much!"

"Well, why is that?"

Rainbow answered without missing a beat. "Well, for one thing it sounds like a butt load of fun! Second, I think I'd be totally awesome at it." She stopped and glared over at the line of cadets, locking her sight on one particular pink pain in the rump. "But most of all I want to teach Spring Song a lesson- I want to show her that she can't control everypony with money and fear. I want to show her that she's not the fourth Princess of Equestria." She tried to mask the venom in her voice.

Ray didn't say anything for a good long while after that. He looked from Rainbow Dash to the line of cadets and allowed his gaze to linger on Spring Song. Dash could tell that he was thinking about this very hard… it must be hard to choose between one of his closest friends and the Wonderbolt Reserve.

Finally he sighed and rubbed his forehead with one front hoof. "I'll consider voting for you okay?" he settled on saying. "Just give me a little more time to think it over."

That was good enough for Rainbow Dash, and she simply smiled and nodded before the two of them walked side by side to join the others for drills.

---

After dinner that evening, Rainbow Dash was returning to her room after an evening of training with Soarin. She had taught her about how to make a trail of lightning appear behind you after kicking a storm cloud. Soarin was almost able to pull it off perfectly, but Rainbow Dash had always instinctively stopped right before her hooves made contact with the cloud… maybe the storm cloud incident had taken more of a toll on her brain than she had thought before?

Lullaby was off somewhere with Sugar Swoop and Smart Set, the two formers most likely trying to persuade the latter to vote for Rainbow Dash. Dash didn't know Smart Set all that well, but from what she did know was that he didn't really decide things for himself. He liked to just see what other ponies were doing and then he would join in so he could fit in. So in a sense he had a mind-set rather similar to that of Stains, only less insane. She was surprised that the two of them didn't seem to get along all that well.

Finally, Rainbow Dash made it to her dorm room, feeling pretty exhausted after a long day of training and campaigning. The constant talk of the competition between her and Spring Song was just getting old in her opinion. It had only been a few days but already it was becoming a sore subject with her. It was still pretty early in the evening but all she wanted to do was flop down face-first on her bed and pass out. At least while she was dreaming she could get the hell away from the spawn of Tirek that was-

"Hey Rainbow Dash!"

Rainbow lazily lolled her head to the side to see who was talking to her, and wanted to just slam her face into the wall when she saw that it was Spring Song and Paradise at the end of the hallway. Good grief, she was just not in the mood for this right now. Just. Walk. Away!

"Have a nice night!" Spring Song sing-songed. Then she trotted past the hallway with Paradise following close behind her. Rainbow was pretty surprised that that confrontation had ended so quickly… and that there had actually been one at all, it had been so short. Oh well, it's not like she was going to complain about that.

"NOT!" Paradise suddenly poked her head back around the wall and sneered down the hallway at Rainbow Dash. And then she was gone.

Rainbow had a million rude words zooming through her head right now, and if she hadn't been so fed up and tired then she would have undoubtedly yelled them so loud that everyone in the Academy could hear her

Instead she just exhaled sharply and pushed her way through the door, slamming it behind her and marching across the room to her bed to take her cadet uniform off. As she unzipped her uniform she cursed Spring Song through her teeth. "Have a nice night yourself Spring Bitch."

She then left her uniform lying on the floor and placed a quill and a piece of paper on her bedside table so she could write her letter to her friends in the morning. She proceeded to hop onto her bed, curling up into a ball without even bothering to get under the covers, and wished that she could sleep until this blasted election was over.

---

The flowers in Rainbow Dash's nightmares were pink and glittery that night.

---

Endnote: I have literally no excuse for why this took so long. I've already said this before, but I have next to no idea how we'll make it to the end of the story from here. So if I'm going slow, just remember that it's only because I'm trying to forge a path from here to the final chapter so I can move on with my life. The light at the end of the tunnel is constantly growing and shrinking right now, so just bear with me. I am a human being and I need time, patience and cookies.

Also, I didn't realize how much I wanted to write Butternut until this chapter. I want her to just constantly reference memes like a YouTube Poop. xD

And yes, Spring Song's posters were supposed to reference Barack Obama's HOPE posters.