“If you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment. Would you capture it, or let it slip?”

The roar of the crowd, the rush of blood in her veins.
Scootaloo stood poised at the starting line. Her knees were weak, her breath was heavy. Her flight suit itched. She was nervous, her stomach twisting in knots, but on the surface she looked calm and ready.
Nineteen other pegasi stood beside her, members from her flight sect. Their familiar faces were mixed with determination, confidence, and nervousness.

“You can do this Scootaloo,” she told herself between heavy breaths. “It’s only the most important race of your life.” She pulled a familiar pair of goggles from her backpack. She stared longingly at the headwear of her hero and idol: Rainbow Dash, and put them on. Even after all their years of use, their lens was still crystal clear. It all came down to this. All the support of her best friends and all of her training, the months Dash had served as her mentor, would culminate in this final moment. She peered up at the crowd wildly cheering on the contestants in the Cloudesseum’s stands. Among them were her closest friends. Applebloom and Sweetiebelle were waving their arms frantically to try and be noticed amongst the other countless ponies. They weren’t hard to spot, a unicorn and earth pony were a rare sight in Cloudsdale, made possible only by a cloudwalking spell.

It was hard to believe that seven years had passed since they had first met. Seven years of seemingly endless adventures on a quest to find their cutie marks. Those misadventures were still just as vivid now as they had been back then. Applebloom had been the first to earn her Cutie Mark. Her skill with interior design was now famous amongst the Canterlot elite. Sweetiebelle followed soon after, her singing career was a hit among Equestria’s club folk, and her songs regularly topped the charts of Vinyl Scratch’s radio station. All that left now was Scootaloo. Today, she would earn her cutie mark.
Rainbow Dash stood beside her two fillyfriends, watching Scootaloo with a smug smile on her face, as if she knew that this would be no contest.

“Attention racers!”

Scootaloo snapped back to reality, Spitfire stood before the racers at the edge of the starting cloud. “Welcome to this year’s Wonderbolt tryouts. You will race a single lap course around the Cloudesseum to the finish line. Do not leave the confines of the cloud barriers or you will be disqualified. You have all been selected from the finest pegasi Equestria has to offer, but only one of you will have what it takes to become a Wonderbolt. I trust you are all up to the challenge.”
Scootaloo observed the track. Clouds had been arranged in a spiral shape around the arena. It reminded Scootaloo of a tornado frozen in time. At the end of the spiral, just before the finish line was a perilous dive.

“Any questions?” The announcer looked at each of the racers. No one spoke, they had waited and trained all their lives for this. “Then, we shall begin. Good luck, my little ponies.”
A Pegasus pony standing on a cloud beside the starting platform raised a checkered flag. The students were tense. Their entire livelihood, their dreams of joining the Celestia’s elite air force would be determined by this race. The crowd, thousands strong, held their breath.

“Three.”
Scootaloo braced herself against the cloud platform, spreading her wings.
“Two.”
This was it, the moment she proved herself.
“One.”
Her heart beat madly in her chest, her blood hot. Her pupils dilated.
“GO.”

The racers dived from the platform, an explosion of turbulence following in their wake. Scootaloo’s wings beat against the moist air, wind rushed through her purple mane, her mind flooded with adrenaline.
The crowd roared. Scootaloo banked left as the downward spiral began, each wingbeat propelled her like a rocket.

“You can do this, kid,” Rainbow Dash’s words, echoed in her head. “With my help there’s no way you can lose.”
The other racers were dangerously close behind her, but Scootaloo shut them out of her mind. To her, they didn’t exist. All that mattered was the finish line, and winning. She had worked her entire life for this moment. This would define her place in Equestria.

“Streamline yourself, align your hooves with the rest of your body,” Dash’s advice rang in her head.
Scootaloo and the other racers were flying so fast the cloud barriers exploded into moisture behind them. A familiar albino Pegasus flew alongside her flank, grinning at her. She spared him only a momentary glimpse. It was Cyrus, one of her closest friends from flight school.

“Great race, huh, Scoots?” he shouted over the turbulence.

“Yeah! A great race to win!” Scootaloo shouted, propelling herself ahead of him.
They were in the heart of the spiral now, and every turn became tighter and tighter by the moment, it was like flying through the eye of a storm. A scream sounded, behind her, one of the racers had crashed into the cloud barrier.

“No matter what happens,” Rainbow Dash had said, as if chastising her. “Never, EVER look back. That finish line is all that matters.”

She was so close to the finish line. All that remained was the dreaded freefall below her, her final test. The end of her crusade to get her cutie mark.

“The Freefall is nothing to be afraid of,” Dash had reassured her. “Fall for exactly five seconds, no more, no less. Open your wings at the last moment and swoop towards the finish.”

Scootaloo came to the end of the spiral. She breathed in deep, and against all instinct closed her wings against her sides. She grit her teeth and braced herself as the wind rushed to lash at her face.

One

“Will you teach me Rainbow Dash? I’ll do whatever it takes!” Scootaloo had asked her idol two years ago.
“Kid, you’re the worst flier in your class. If the instructors can’t help you, what can I teach you?” her future mentor had scoffed.

Two

“So how is your training with Dash going?” Sweetiebelle had asked Scootaloo after her first month of training.
“Terrible,” Scootaloo admitted. “I’ll never be as awesome as her. I should just stay grounded.”
“Now what kinda defeatist talk is that?” Applebloom demanded. “There’s no way you can fail with us helping you!”

The first month of her training had been hilarious to Dash. Scootaloo was so inept at flying it was like watching one of the comedy plays that occasionally played in Ponyville’s theatre. The training was so hard and Dash’s regime so unforgivably unbearable that if it wasn’t for Applebloom and Sweetiebelle’s constant support she would’ve given up after the first month.
But then, Scootaloo started to impress Dash. Despite her obvious shortcomings with her unusually small wings, when she had the support of her friends the filly was the most determined and enthusiastic Pegasus Dash had ever met.

Three

“FINE. I admit it. You have shown some potential.” Dash had said, Scootaloo had never felt prouder in her whole life.
Four
“You’re now top of your flight class? Maybe I was wrong about you, kid.”
Scootaloo had surged to the top of her flight class, she would not let her mentor nor her best friends down. She would get her cutie mark right here and now.

Five

“There’s nothing more that I can teach you, kid.” Dash had said the week before the race. “Here, I think you’ve earned these.”
In her hoof was a pair of goggles, handed down to her from Spitfire herself. Scootaloo gaped at her.
“Y – Your goggles!? Rainbow Dash, thank you!”
Her mentor smiled. “You’re welcome. Do me proud, kid.”

Scootaloo felt tears well in her eyes. She was so close. This was the moment she would win it all. This was the moment she would finally prove herself to her hero. To her friends, to the world, what she was capable of. This was where she would earn her cutie mark.

She opened her wings. The wind rushed up to greet them, unfurling her feathers and straining her muscles against the g forces. Scootaloo grit her teeth, it hurt. Her wings were abnormally small and unsuited for this strain, but she would not let it stop her.

She flapped her wings, beating them powerfully against the buffeting wind, and swooped over the finish line. She landed on the cloud floor, her mind racing and fading adrenaline pounding in her ears. She couldn’t believe it, she had made it. She had come first.

The whoops and hollers of the crowd were deafening, the stamping of their hooves in applause like rolling thunder. She looked up at her friends Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle who were shouting her name in praise. She looked at Rainbow Dash.

The mare merely smiled and nodded. Scootaloo knew she’d done her proud.

“You were awesome, Scoots!”
“Ah’ve never seen a pony fly so fast!”
“You did good, kid. I’m proud of you.”

Scootaloo and her friends stood in the locker room of the Cloudesseum, embracing in a group hug. “Thank you, all of you,” Scootaloo said, happy tears welling in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you all. I didn’t just win this race. We all did.”

Scootaloo withdrew from their embrace, smiling. “Well I better get this suit off, it’s starting to itch,” she chuckled, unzipping it with her teeth. She pulled off the suit and tossed it into the laundry basket sitting by the showers.

“Scootaloo, look!” Applebloom exclaimed, pointing at her flank.

Scootaloo looked over her shoulder, her eyes widened. Adorning her flanks was a cutie mark. A criss cross of chequered flags divided by a lightning bolt. A racing cutie mark. Scootaloo looked like she was about to explode with joy. After so many years of searching, getting covered with tree sap, and being a menace around Ponyville she had finally found the one true thing she was good at.

That night, Pinkie Pie held the biggest Cute Ceneara that Ponyville had ever seen. And beside her was Rainbow Dash, she had never seen her mentor so proud. This was the happiest day of her life.
It was the end of their adventures as the Cutie Mark Crusaders, but only the start of so many more.