Stretches

There was a squeak of scooter wheels, and the orange blur vanished behind a tree.

Well... it mostly vanished. If the amateur spy had truly intended to stay concealed, she would have managed the feat with barely the slightest effort: the chosen tree was more than wide enough to conceal a lithe filly form. But she insisted on seeing her target, which meant her head kept poking out from concealment. Every so often, she would head-whip a notepad out of a saddlebag and mouthwrite a few observations. If anypony caught her at either activity, she pulled back as quickly as she could. (For the latter, she typically dropped the pad and had to snatch it out of sight well before she needed to convince herself nopony had noticed.) And once she was fully behind cover again, she seemed to instantly decide the effort had been a perfect one, nopony had figured out a thing, and she could just safely move on to the next tree once her target shifted position again. Because she was just that good. Exactly like everything else she ever attempted, none of which had ever produced a mark.

And also much like pretty much everything else she had ever attempted, just about all of Ponyville was fully aware of every last futile effort. Normally, that would have meant ponies in various states of worry, fear, incipient panic, shelter construction, and the occasional flurry of all-out evacuation. But in this case, her markless activity had a target. A very distinct one. Clearly that meant the target was the only pony in trouble. Also that the best place to be was Very Far Away From Him. This was presenting the target with some difficulties in daily interpony relationships.

But under one of the other hooves, it did tend to shorten the shopping lines when ponies scrambled in all directions while trying to avoid being anywhere in the vicinity when It Finally Happened. In this case, the target had just involuntarily emptied out an entire candy shop, and the former customers were currently lurking in their chosen cubbyholes all over the settled zone, waiting for some form of All Clear to be sounded, preferably in the form of a mark which many were convinced would never come.

Unfortunately for Bon-Bon, somepony had to stick around and collect the actual bits.

"Snowflake, did you know she's --"

He sighed. It was long, deep, sincere, and shifted four times the muscle mass of any other Ponyville resident on the way out, along with carrying three times the concern. "Yeah."

"How long has she been following you?"

He stomped his left forehoof twice, nodded to the wall calendar.

"Two days?" Bon-Bon wasn't even trying to hide her astonishment. "And you're still in one piece?"

Another nod. Admittedly, it was a rather isolated piece. After the first three hours, the town had collectively begun to assign him a personal blast radius.

The proprietor abruptly snickered. Snowflake raised an eyebrow, waited for the explanation.

"Well," she said, tone laced with conspiracy and mockery in not-quite-equal measure, "maybe it's not about Crusading this time. Maybe, just maybe, you're about to have the honor of being a certain rolling disaster area's first-ever filly cru --"

One more hoof stomp, one which came with just a little more power behind it.

It took twelve seconds before the nougats stopped vibrating on their trays. Three more for the display cases.

Bon-Bon swallowed.

"So... I'll just... wrap this up for you?"

Flatly, "Yeah."

He slowly trotted out, purchase safely tucked in his saddlebags, or as safely as anything could be with a Crusader on the prowl. Noted the presence of three ponies perched in what they must have decided were sheltering branches (none of which were anywhere near That Tree) and concealing late spring blooms, along with the very surprising fact that two of them were not pegasi, indicating either hasty assistance from the lone winged member of the trio or a previously unsuspected talent for high-jumping. Ponies often discovered new capabilities deep within themselves when a certain group of fillies were visibly at their endless (and still pointless) work, most of which related to hasty retreat.

Everypony in the settled zone had to find ways of coping with the ongoing activities of the Crusade. This included those ponies who had moved into town during the seemingly endless quest, and many of those had decided their best way of managing the problem was by moving right back out again. The fillies had few fans in town these days, barely had any adults about who would not begin pondering the national disaster relief budget when the trio came into view -- but there were some who loved them, and chief among those were the ponies employed by the town's rental and real estate agencies, as there was nothing quite like collecting a commission on the same property seven times in one season.

And now one of the trio had set her scooter wheels towards him.

Several ponies would have fainted. Multiple wills would have been updated. With different targets, the moving supply store would have seen another upsurge in sales, followed by Ryder kissing the portrait of the Crusaders he kept in a not-very-private place of near-worship.

Snowflake just shook his head slowly and took off, slowly flying east.

Behind him, a distinctive gasp rang out, and the wheels began to squeak again.

[/hr]

Under normal circumstances, anypony within three gallops would have picked up on her frustration. After all, Snowflake was flying slowly -- extremely so. A butterfly could have kept up with him without effort, and several had. He was currently giving a ride to several beetles who had decided a new form of public transportation had been passing by. Inchworms would have tossed out slowpoke jokes, and all of it should have been fully intolerable to a filly who was generally known for having exactly two speeds: All-Out Chaos and Just Crashed, But Give Me A Minute. On a normal day, the sheer mind-numbing pace of this would have broken her within two minutes and sent the grumbling filly off to inadvertently destroy something else.

But she was still following him. One wing flap, one answering wheel squeak from below. And Snowflake was getting sick of waiting for the fourth horseshoe to drop.

What was she doing? Was the latest Crusade designed to gain a mark in surveillance? If so, it was showing the same flaws as every other Crusader activity, although he was fairly certain the wheels had been noise-free when she'd started: the sheer land speeds the filly often achieved meant she went through a ridiculous amount of friction-burned lubricant. And how could -- no, would -- this go horribly wrong in the end?

He had no intention of personally finding out. If the game was shadowing...

The near-total-lack-of-pace had brought them out of town: still within the settled zone, but not too far away from the fringe. They were starting to pass through an open field, one with short grass, and he heard the squeaks shift: at a guess, his follower was moving to stay under the only cover available.

Snowflake looked up at the thickening cloud layer and shrugged, which offended several beetles. Put on just a touch more speed as he shifted his efforts towards the vertical, ascended until he went fully behind the white.

The squeaks came to a full stop. A tiny sigh, one designed to be overheard as seldom as possible (and denied every time it was caught), shifted a few small blades of grass. The sound of dirt being scuffed as the scooter was rotated, facing back towards town.

A whistling noise from overhead, as if something very large was plummeting through the atmosphere in a controlled-yet-extremely-rapid descent.

A gasp. A frantic attempt to accelerate from a standing start --

-- and too late.

There was a huge WHUMP! Dirt flew out in all directions. A group of very surprised beetles landed on the other side of the field. The ground itself turned into a reverberating instrument and held the note for a surprisingly long time.

Silence. If you discounted the rapid, panicked breathing to the immediate right.

Snowflake kept his gaze focused directly ahead, not looking at anything other than the treeline, and spoke to the air.

"I know this is out in the open," he softly said. "No trunks to hide behind. No buildings. Only one thing large enough to give you any hope of concealment at all."

The breathing found a way to accelerate. Its owner still couldn't manage the trick. After all, she was hiding...

"I am perfectly aware that you're in my shadow."

Another gasp, and a burst of wind against his right flank as her wings buzzed, pushing...

...gone, leaving a trail of disrupted grass and high-friction smoke in her wake.

Snowflake sighed.

"She's out of lubricant again," he softly told any beetles who might have hung around to file complaints, and took off once more, heading for home.

[/hr]

It was a market day, and that meant Snowflake was at work -- or at least in the middle of trying to line some more up. His tent had been erected early in the morning, with the sign posted in the usual spot: Day And Night Labor: No Job Too Big Or Too Heavy. And then he'd gone inside to wait.

Waiting had been most of what he'd done. Oh, a few clients had stopped by, mostly regulars, and those early in the morning. A field needed clearing, some construction supplies had to be delivered, one public works project required an extra set of hooves if it was ever going to be completed on time. He'd booked it all, worked out the schedule and calculated his income. But for the most part, he'd generally found himself sitting quietly within the light blue glow of the Sun-drenched canvas, waiting for somepony to approach. Anypony at all. And he knew the cause: the town had yet to become fully aware that she was no longer on his tail, and many ponies would remain reluctant to be anywhere near him until the news completely spread. Not that some ponies ever came all that close to him. Close enough to be overheard, yes, but too far away for anything else...

It was a slow day: those happened, and he had some bits put aside for such occasions. But knowing the cause was grating against his coat, and most of his free time was spent in trying not to blame the filly. Unlike many of Ponyville's inhabitants, he didn't believe all the damage the trio caused was deliberate. But there were times when he almost did start to feel they were a traveling chaos plague, and with the disease recently having visited his doorstep, the other sign (invisibly) hanging over his tent read QUARANTINE. And this despite the fact that the weekend was over, with the supposed virus currently isolated...

He tried to put it out of his mind, relax on his custom-made bench and just read for a while. But visions of orange blurs covered up the words, and he sighed to himself before once again checking the tent flaps, just in case there might be any hint of vibration from the approach of a client pony. Nothing. Just distant noises, some of which almost sounded like wheels squeaking. A memory he couldn't quite seem to get out of his head.

A glance at the canvas glow, noting the portion of highest intensity. Almost noon: far too many hours to go. Well, it was a thick book: for some strange reason, Twilight had felt he might enjoy a history of pegasi military tactics and for lack of anything better to do, he was failing to prove her right. His eyes went over the same page for the fourth time, frequently interrupted by still more pointless checks on the motionless tent flaps --

-- they shifted.

Not by much. Just enough to let a small body in, one which trotted in as if it owned every bit of space he was occupying and was about to announce an increase in the rent. Plopped down on the bench he kept for clients with a force which informed all the amazed spectators that cracking it from sheer impact would have been the most awesome possible result, and the total lack of damage was blamed on the universe's unwillingness to assist with a really good dramatic moment.

Purple eyes stared at him with something which was probably meant to be fierceness.

"I want --" She cut herself off, clearly deciding that wasn't forceful enough. "I'm hiring you."

He blinked.

"This is a school day," he softly said. "You're not supposed to be at the market right now."

Bluntly, "Miss Cheerilee let us out early."

He did not lean forward. He did not set his chin or narrow his eyes. He simply looked at her and waited.

"She let me out early."

More waiting. There was a little sweat in her coat, but she'd had that when she'd entered.

"...for lunch." With a surge of defiance, "And I can eat lunch wherever I want to! As long as I'm back in time --"

"-- you want to hire me."

She nodded.

"For what?" Ponies generally booked Snowflake to move things. Haul. Push. Every so often, somepony would look at his sheer mass and falsely perceive violence waiting on a signal to be unleashed, a belief which generally left them trying to figure out some extremely elaborate tail knots. With the Crusaders... the first thought was covering up a disaster, possibly one beyond the scope of what they caused every week.

Admittedly, that could potentially turn into something close to full-time employment.

She stared at him across the small center table. Her breaths were sharp and shallow. Feathers vibrated at her sides.

"You don't have that much time before you're missed," Snowflake quietly pointed out. "Even at the speeds you get on that scooter, you'll need a few minutes to hurry back --"

"-- you can fly."

It had been a statement, and an exceptionally blunt one. But there had been other things riding on those three words. Anger. Frustration. Self-loathing...

A simple "Yes," with most of the shock removed before emergence.

"Teach me."

...longing.

She was staring at him again. Many ponies did that, and so many had their gazes ultimately land where hers had gone.

"Your wings," she starkly said. "They're... like mine."

A slow head shake, one forever tinged with a regret he could never completely shed. "I doubt that."

"They're small," she insisted, using a tone which suggested it was possible he'd just never noticed and she felt the words were doing him a courtesy by pointing it out. "And you fly. You fly anyway. And you're good. You were at the Wonderbolts training camp..."

"That was just --" trying to prove myself, over and over no matter how many times I've done it before because some ponies still can't believe "-- something to do. I didn't join. I couldn't. My --" and he stopped, sensing that talking about flying too much in front of her was exactly the wrong thing to do.

No -- remembering.

But she was persistent. "Your what?"

He sighed. "My techniques," he softly admitted. "I'm... not very good at them, and I never will be. I can help a little in a group effort, but I can't manage all that much on my own. The Wonderbolts use a lot of techniques in their performances. The lightning streaks, storm cloud contrails... those are extremely advanced, beyond what I'll ever be able to do. So they thanked me for coming, and then they sent me home." Spitfire had given him the dismissal personally, directly told him she'd been both surprised and impressed by how fast and maneuverable he was -- but without the techniques, none of that mattered. Snowflake had known that going in. And he'd still attended.

Just to prove I could fly with them.

Just to prove I can fly.

"But you fly. And I -- it's been years, everypony else is flying and I --" Boldly, "-- I just don't have the right teacher! Sure, I could figure it out on my own, but who has that kind of time? I've got -- stuff to do. With my friends. So I thought, maybe one good lesson, from somepony who's -- like me. Whose wings are like mine..."

"Stand up?" It was not an order.

She still took it as one, and treated it as he'd expected her to: with resentment. "I'm not leaving. I've got time and I'm still hiring --"

"-- I'm not sending you away." The words surprised him. "I just need you to stand up right now --" he had to force the next words, and hoped none of the effort had been visible "-- and then I would appreciate it if you would flare your wings out for me. Full extension, maximum lift angle. And keep them that way."

He was amazed he'd been able to get it all out.

'Go ahead, freak, show us what you've got! Or the empty space from everything you don't!'

The flush of embarrassment was beginning to discolor the orange coat, and mere pride was not enough to push it back. "I don't see why I have to --"

"You said your wings are like mine," Snowflake gently cut in. "I don't think they are, not from the way I've seen you move before this. But to prove it one way or the other, I have to take a longer look. If you don't want me to... I'll understand. Believe me, Scootaloo, I won't hold that against you. You can trot out of here right now and we'll never mention this again. But if you really want me to teach you... I can't do that without knowing what I'm working with."

Slowly, she pushed herself off the bench. Made an effort to stop all four knees from knocking, one he knew she was praying he hadn't seen. Removed her saddlebags, braced all her legs into a position of angry defiance, flared out her wings in a single fierce movement which did nothing to push the hurt away.

He did not approach, he did not touch: he had no right. He simply inspected her from that moderate distance with the practiced eye of a pony who had done so too many times before, with so many conducted from the shadowed corners of a schoolyard while fillies and colts his own age laughed and played aerial games chosen with the purpose of excluding him. And saw exactly what he'd expected to. What he'd hoped for.

"Mantle is standard," he murmured. "Lesser and regular coverts completely undamaged. No scapulars absent. Extant muscle development is a little more oriented on lateral movement than vertical, that's from the scooter, but it's not at an interfering level and might actually help with certain efforts..."

No. Not like him at all and for that, he silently thanked Celestia and Luna both.

"You're normal, Scootaloo." And the words made him smile. "If I had to guess --" and it was a very expert one "-- you're just late to your growth spurt, and not all that late to begin with. Maybe a few moons or so at the most. As for your classmates -- some ponies just start earlier than others. I know a mixed school is less likely to have classes on pegasus wing development, but your parents should have talked to you about this --"

Her eyes went fierce again, and the intensity almost made him pull back. "Normal? Flying is normal!"

He took a slow breath, tried to make his words even. "So is wing development. Nopony starts at full span. Even infants are short for their overall body size: they mostly take off on the power of their Surges. And there's also flight feathers. You have a few, and that's a good sign to begin with -- but not enough. Have your wings been itching lately? If so, the bulk of their mass is starting to come in. You'll also go through some molting as you lose some of the junior pinions, and you'll feel like you want to preen yourself constantly --"

There was just a sliver of purple visible through narrowed lids. "I. Can't. Fly."

"You didn't answer me," Snowflake gently insisted. "Any itching? Preening urges?"

"So what?" And it was halfway to a shout, with the internal agony making every letter into an individual scream. "It's not happening right! Not when everypony else is having it happen! Not before, not first! I should be flying, I'm sick of waiting and trying and -- and this should have happened already, everypony else, this has to happen now!"

He waited for the trembling to stop, the filly and tent flaps both, and wondered how much of the sound had made it past the canvas.

"You fly," she nearly whispered, and he wondered if it was all she still had strength for. "I was watching you. You can go fast when you want to. You hover. I was following you, taking notes, but I couldn't make any of it work... How? How are you flying at all?"

The only thing he could do was be honest with her. "I'm... strong." And that was very nearly the whole of it. "I have less to push with -- so I push that much harder. But I'm --" and she had to hear it, no matter how hard the words were to say, she needed them "-- not normal, Scootaloo, and you are. I don't have a choice. My --"

"-- make me strong."

He stared at her, red eyes on purple. She refused to blink.

"Make me strong like you," Scootaloo said as her legs straightened into absolute rebellion. Her tail, which hadn't gotten the message, drooped from the weight of despair.

Slowly, oh so slowly, Snowflake got up from his bench.

It took a while. There was a lot to move.

He felt her eyes on him, going over every muscle, every bulging piece of internal power, all the things he'd had to do, and he could see her struggling not to pull back, to retreat from the different, somepony who seemed barely part of the herd at all as he reached his full height and took a deep breath, mass greater than any other stallion's seemingly expanding in all directions --

-- she took a step back. Only a small one, and the movement had been completely involuntary: he knew both things from the quickly-suppressed look of shock on her face. But the fear had been there. It was easy for him to recognize, because it so often was.

"This is what you want?" This time, the near-whisper was his. "To never fit in with any flock or herd? To have ponies staring everywhere you go, laughing behind their hooves while hoping you hear them, ready to retreat the moment you turn around because they're so sure you can't follow? To know nopony will ever want to be with you because there isn't a single pony in all of Equestria who's attracted to this, that you can barely find ponies willing to tolerate your presence most of the time --"

"-- you..." The word itself was trembling. "...you're with Fluttershy... all the time... everypony thinks..."

They think the freaks belong together. He knew. He'd heard those carefully-pitched words too. "She's a client." A sister. "She trains me so I can look after the cottage when she's on missions. That's all. It's not romance, and it never will be. I came to ground because I didn't fit in with the flock. I don't fit in with the herd either. Anywhere. And I did this to myself, Scootaloo, on purpose -- and the only thing I gained was flight." As gentle as he could make the words, "Is that worth what you're going to lose?"

Her breaths were deep this time, shuddering, and she was trying to conceal all of it, trying to make herself seem immune to the fear while fully locked within it. Lying to herself without pulling off the con.

"I... I have friends." Defiant again, her weapon of choice against the world. "They'll stay my friends no matter what I look like. I don't care about stupid kissing and dumb romance and all that frilly gross adult stuff! I want -- the sky."

"But your wings --"

"-- teach me to fly. Make me strong."

And the unspoken words hung in the air between them: 'Or I'll do it myself.'

The trembling stopped, and she simply stared at him, waiting.

Everything in the tent was blue-tinged: it was the nature of light through the canvas. Everything except those purple eyes.

He settled back onto his bench.

"You're hiring me."

She nodded.

"So you can pay?"

She looked truly insulted, then bent her head down for her discarded saddlebags, rummaged around with her mouth for a while. Several pieces of metal eventually landed on the little table.

Snowflake looked them over. Most were dirty. Several showed the seeming corrosion which indicated they had been in the dirt for a long time. Others displayed the sort of mild discoloration generally found when a bit had been sitting in a body of water for a while -- say, a fountain. Others had just been trod on. Repeatedly. And put together, they were just about enough to hire him for just under seven minutes.

For one glorious moment, he saw himself in the mayor's office, informing the local government that he had just been put in a position where he could take one of the Crusaders out of the chaos mix and all he was asking for such a sterling service to all ponykind was twenty percent of the town repair and disaster relief savings over the training period. Then he pictured the mayor countering by asking him to guarantee it through personally paying twenty percent of any extra damages during that same time, and it would turn out that Scootaloo had been the moderating influence.

The vision broke up into a storm of swirling bankruptcy forms, and Snowflake took a long moment to question the state of his sanity before proceeding into the next part.

"I need you to read this -- " he dipped his head under the table, brought out a dusty standard training contract "-- and have your parents sign it."

Every part of her face went hard. "I'm hiring you. Not any parents. Me."

"You're underage. If you sign the contract, it can't be enforced --"

"-- I don't break my word." And that was anger again. "I don't care what some stupid contract says. I care what I say, and I said I want this."

So: underpaid and legally under the table. Perfect. "Read it," Snowflake sighed. "All the way through. And then you can sign."

He spotted her eyes skimming over the text within the first sentence. "Ack-know-ledge that muscle training is the pro-cess of causing mul-ti-ple small in-jur -- oh, come on! This thing goes on forever!"

"It's four pages."

"Like I said, forever!" Her eyes moved faster than ever, mouth flipping to the next page well before the mind coordinating all of it could take in a single word. The sequence was repeated twice more. "There! I read it! Plus I understood all of it! I'm signing it -- um... do you have a quill?"

He passed it over. The result wasn't exactly recognizable as mouthwriting, although some interesting visions could have been found in the central ink blot.

"Okay," she confidently declared after nosing the paperwork back to his side of the table. "You're hired. And that means I'm your boss. So that means I get to tell you what to do. And I say we start right now --"

"-- after school."

"But I'm your boss!"

"And I have exclusive domain over setting the training schedule."

"What gives you the right to do that?"

"Page three."

She blinked. Snatched the contract back. Flipped to the relevant page and, judging from this particular set of eye movements, registered seven whole words. "Oh, for... fine. Where are we doing this? And when -- exactly?"

He considered. "Remember that field from yesterday?" She did something which was assuredly not blushing, nodded. "We'll need some open space. Meet me there an hour after school lets out. After you've done your homework. Bring your scooter and oil up the wheels." Another nod. "And... wait a minute." He located a blank sheet of paper, started scribbling.

"What are you doing?"

Snowflake carefully put the quill down. "Notes. For Miss Cheerilee and your parents. So they'll know where you were and what you'll be doing. The first is just in case you're late --"

She stood up.

"I," she declared, "am never late." Glanced up at the canvas, took quick note of the strongest glow's position. "See you in the field!" And gone.

Snowflake watched the tent flaps sway for a while.

So. Training her for flight. Teaching somepony with normal (if very slightly late in growth spurt) wings, somepony where a few of his methods might assist -- there was nothing wrong with being a little stronger -- but to go the full route would likely limit her ultimate capabilities. Along with so many other things.

Strong like him. There was no way he was ever going to let that happen.

Snowflake thought about the ponies who had hired him for strength training in the past, mostly athletes looking for an extra edge. Considered the sheer number who had quit partway through the program because they were no longer capable of seeing the gain on the other side of the labor, never understanding the cost in sweat and deep aches and actual effort required to obtain what they'd just decided was never truly wanted in the first place...

He grinned, and gave her a week before she quit. If he was on his game, three days, with the final one only counted because she would have to drag herself into the tent just long enough to demand her money back.

But...

...the Crusade goes on...

No. She would quit. Oh, if she somehow stuck with it for any real period of time, anything over a few hours, he would make sure to give her training which would do some good -- but to be like him... that would never happen, not as long as he had the strength to stop it. And the best way to freeze her in her own hoofprints was to show her the first part of the price.

She'll quit.

She had to.

It was for her own good.

Lunges

Snowflake checked the Sun's position -- just about an hour since the school had closed -- then glanced back towards the town. No rapidly-approaching orange blur, at least not just yet. But she still had some time before that never-late was broken, and he doubted she was the type to quit before the first session: the mere existence of the Crusade indicated that initial attempts were just about always welcome, if only for the fillies about to fail at them.

He had been using the time to set up things up, and not just the nearly-hour he'd spent among the waving grass. It had taken a major round of rummaging through his little basement (and most ground-based pegasi went with attics, but it was what had been available to rent) before he'd found the proper equipment. In retrospect, he had almost been surprised that he'd brought it along during the move, but he supposed that somewhere on the subconscious level, he'd always been ready to face the possibility of training a child, somepony whose wings

were like mine

and Scootaloo still didn't qualify. She didn't need the full course, and nopony else should ever have to deal with the full consequences unless there was no other way to reach the sky at all. Perhaps not even then.

But once he'd found the right pieces, there had still been work-free time to play with, and some of it had been used for more parts of the set-up process. One portion had proven initially futile. Another was probably about to be: he'd scrounged some of his first books from the basement. They were dusty, near-ancient editions which his confused parents had eventually found in settled zones gallops and gallops away, for strength training was a rare pursuit in Equestria and the few publications which explained how to do it had their sales suffer accordingly. It made that part of his personal library into a rarity on a near-par with verified artifacts from the Pre-Discordian Era, although not exactly with the same value. Still, it wasn't as if Twilight hadn't tried getting him to keep it at her tree a few times...

All of it would be freely available for Scootaloo to just barely bother pretending to skim through, at least for the week until she quit. A pity, really: there were things there worth knowing, including exact details on why she was about to give up.

Snowflake gently smiled to himself, and went back to clearing rocks.

At his best guess, the twinned buzz of wings and freshly-oiled wheels hit his ears with about thirty seconds left before never-late would have required its first poorly-excused exception. "I'm here!" Scootaloo not-quite-gasped from behind him. "I just got -- caught up in stuff, but I... what's that?"

He glanced backwards to check on what she was staring at before answering, and found her focus exactly where he'd expected it. "It's a lunge path." He'd cut the grass extra-short -- a mix of tool use and light snacking -- in a narrow trail which stretched fifty body lengths from end to end. "You'll be doing some of the work there today."

"On the ground?" Mild outrage.

Snowflake fully turned his body this time. "What did you think was involved?"

"Teaching me how to fly! That's what I'm paying you for! That means I should be training in the air!"

"So you'd prefer I put a lunge path in the clouds."

She nodded.

"And if you go off the edge?"

Her mouth opened.

Her mouth closed.

"Flight camps," Snowflake softly said, "have multiple instructors. They also have at least one roaming safety coach for each attendee. And when I say 'safety coach', I mean a pony hovering nearby to catch anypony who starts to fall. Put it all together with the more capable students and there are at least three ponies on standby to help any single one who gets into trouble. This is just you and me. We're staying on the ground for a while."

His speech had given her more than enough time to get her bravado back. "Fine. So I'll go up after my first lesson." She shuffled off her saddlebags, then started to go for her helmet -- but hesitated when she saw Snowflake shake his head. "What? I want to get started already!"

Ideally, your first and only lesson. And yes. You'll go up there in a few moons, after your growth spurt really begins, which will be long after you quit. "You'll need that." And with a switch in gears meant to give her minimal time for creating excuses, "Is your homework done?"

She blinked. Then realized he'd seen it, and her voice came out just a little louder than it should have. "Yes."

"Show me."

"I can't."

"Because?"

"It's at home."

More staring, eyes locked. She wasn't exactly on the verge of gaining a mark in that either.

"If we went to your house right now --"

"-- we're on the clock. You exclusively set the training schedule for now and as your boss, I want you to start work already!" Boldly, "Besides, you don't know where I live and showing you would just take more time anyway, so if you can't take my word for it --"

"-- I was there two hours ago."

Another blink, and this time, a tiny swallow was added to the mix. "Why -- why would you go to my house? I was still in school! If you wanted to start earlier, you should have given Miss Cheerilee a note or --"

The moderated force of his soft voice was still more than enough to cut in, along with shifting a few of the smaller pebbles. "-- your parents still need to know what you're doing. And who you're with. I know you're with your friends most of the time, and they trust you three to take care of each other." Which potentially said something very dark about their parental judgment, but that wasn't the current point. "But they know Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom. They don't know me. I wanted to introduce myself and make sure they knew what we would be doing. I also had to be sure they were okay with it." A pair of total truths, along with two more places where doors could have been slammed in front of a frustrated orange face before the effort ever began.

Was she even aware of the little tremble in her voice? "They -- wouldn't have been home."

He nodded. "They weren't. So I asked one of your neighbors where they worked --"

"-- outside Ponyville," she forcefully broke in. "They travel. A lot."

Which had also been the opinion of the only neighbor he'd been able to find within their own residence, one who had never even seen the filly's parents and was decidedly less surprised about that oddity than the fact that Snowflake had been speaking with him. "So I gathered. All I could do was leave a note on the front door."

"That's fine," she rushed on. "I'll make sure they see it when they get in --"

"-- you didn't see it?"

"Why would I see it?"

"Because," Snowflake carefully closed the trap, "it's at your home. Where you stopped. And did your homework."

Ten full seconds where the only sounds came from wind-rustled grass and two pegasi breathing: one slow and steady, the other decidedly quicker than she wanted it to be.

"I went in the back door," Scootaloo finally offered. "We're wasting time --"

"-- for the next lesson," Snowflake softly declared, "you are bringing your completed homework with you. And we're not going to start training until I see it."

"You don't have any right --"

"-- page two. Making sure the training schedule has nothing else interfering with it, and the other way around." He nodded towards a shadow-shrouded section of grass. "I brought a copy of the contract if you want to review."

The rustling seemed to be getting louder, which didn't do much to mute the anger within her inhalations.

"Fine," she huffily decided. "Whatever. You should have daisies on your flank instead of that weight, or at least little smiling faces on the ends... Can we just get started already?"

He nodded, then inclined his head towards a small pile of rocks: all the potential wheel-throwing debris he'd found during the clearance work. He'd carefully placed the equipment at the top of the infant wall, still well within the filly's mouth reach. "The elastic and heavy linen there? Those are wing harnesses. Slip those on. They're designed so that you can put them on yourself without help. If you get into trouble, I can show you how it's done --"

"-- they won't fit." She was staring at the contraptions with open loathing, and very little of the emotion was actually directed at the elastic.

"They will."

With that hatred starting to vocally manifest, "They're for wings. Nothing anypony makes for wings ever fits me unless it's for somepony whole years younger, and then it's shoddy and cheap and stupid..."

"Those are expensive and durable and necessary," Snowflake calmly replied. "And they'll fit."

She had to visibly force every slow hoofstep towards the rockpile, reached for the harnesses so slowly as to nearly reach a complete stop (while instinctively ignoring the books), just barely nudged the linen towards her wings... but then the first loops closed snugly, exactly where they were supposed to go. And as Snowflake watched with mild surprise (because he usually did have to help out with a first donning), her eyes widened and a nimble mouth tugged on elastic here, adjusted a fastening there, and kept it all going until the contraption had been put precisely in place, down to the last feather.

"It... fits." There was a light touch of awe in her voice, and it was almost a buoyant one. "Where did you find a harness which would fit?"

His answering words had felt as if they would need to be forced out, jarred loose only through the visioning-reddening shove that came from every bit of effort he had to give. Instead, they emerged quietly, smoothly, and with a feeling that was as close to natural as he'd ever been through. As close to normal. "It's mine."

She looked at him. At his wings.

"...yours?"

"My first one," he nodded. "It's a little lighter than the ones I use now -- and it can't carry anywhere near as much weight." A second nod, directed at the little reinforced loops hanging off Scootaloo's sides.

"So that's what those are for? Carrying weights? I mean, I knew I hadn't put it on wrong and didn't have a loose end or anything..."

"Weights," he confirmed. "I'm going to load you up now, if I may?" That wasn't something somepony should do themselves on a first try: the weights had to be delicately placed and balanced so they wouldn't bang into the ribs on every wing downbeat. Improper installation would inevitably lead to heavy bruising and Snowflake, with nopony to supervise his own first efforts, had learned that the hard way.

More hope in her eyes, that look of journey begun so often reflected in Crusader eyes about an hour before the first explosion went off. "Go ahead! How much am I hauling? Half a bale? No -- gotta be a full bale, one on each wing, and --"

He began trotting towards that part of the rockpile. "Seven pounds on each side."

"Seven pounds?" It wasn't a scream of outrage, but give it twenty more decibels and the qualification would be met.

"Yes."

Now a mere five decibels away, "I can lift seven pounds just by breathing hard! Fluttershy moves, like, fifteen pounds just by swishing her tail! Maybe twenty! How is a stupid seven pounds supposed to do anything? I weigh more than that, and you're supposed to be teaching me how to fly, how to be strong, and you don't have to be strong to lift seven stupid pounds --"

"-- it's fourteen when you add them together," he carefully cut in. And before that served to do nothing more than lightly edit her original speech, "And at this stage, it's not about the raw amount of mass you can lift. It's about how many times you can shift it."

"But it's just fourteen stupid --"

"-- if you flap your wings once, with everything you have behind it, could you get in the air?"

Which briefly stopped the anger in its own hoofprints. He glanced back just long enough to see her expression twisting, displaying a degree of thought which was hardly ever seen before any part of an actual Crusade. "I..." A wince. "Maybe not me, not just yet, anyway." With that last in a tone which suggested 'yet' was waiting at the end of the first lesson. "But with a lot of pegasi... yeah. One flap, the hardest flap imaginable... that would put them up."

He nodded. "And if that flap exhausted them, brought them to the point where they couldn't try to manage another one... would they stay up?"

The blink was rapidly becoming familiar. "...no. So... it's not just about strength? It's about how often you can use it?"

Much to his own surprise, Snowflake found himself smiling. "That's right. The one-push measurement is mostly good for contests, Scootaloo -- trying to show how much you can move in a single effort because that effort is supposed to outdo everypony else. Flying takes a lot more than one push. I could test you for your maximum, and at some point, I will --" not that they were going to get that far "-- but right now, I need your endurance. And to get your first workout in at the same time. Right now, seven pounds per side is right."

"It's..." and a quick glance at his flank. "...your mark." Some jealousy in that, as he'd expected -- but also a tiny smile. "I guess... I have to trust a talent, right?"

It was neither his mark (which was much more representational than literal) nor his special talent, but he doubted she would ever believe the truth, not at this point, and they weren't going to know each other long enough for the reality to come out. "May I put the weights on?" She nodded, and he approached, careful not to come any closer than strictly necessary, holding his breath as he secured the dense little ingots within the steel-and-brass at the end. "Flap a few times, very slowly. Let's make sure those aren't hitting you on the downbeats."

She did so, and they weren't. "This doesn't feel like -- anything. I mean, I know they're there, but I don't feel like there's any effort..."

Not yet. "You oiled your scooter wheels?" That part of the mechanical buzz had sounded normal, but he was quickly learning that with this filly, a step-by-step check was best.

She eagerly nodded. "Yeah!"

All right. "Take the scooter to the far end of the lunge path. When you're ready, accelerate -- with your wings only -- as hard as you can. But only for half the path. When your front wheels cross the red line, start braking. Again, wings only, Scootaloo. Don't use a leg for a drag stop unless you're about to go out of the terminus circle. It may take a few lunges to get the right range, but you're trying to stop in roughly the circle's center each time. Once you've stopped, turn the scooter and go back the other way."

"Okay," she replied, voice locked into determination. "How many times?"

"As many as you can do in fifteen minutes. After that, use another fifteen minutes and just propel yourself slowly around the field." He indicated the fresh edge track. "Don't stop completely -- but don't push too hard either. Then go back to the starting circle and begin lunging again. We'll repeat three times in total: ninety minutes, then a single speed lunge so I can compare your start and end times."

Which got him a fox grin. "So this is about setting a personal record? Something I can beat later when I get stronger?"

He thought about old notebooks filled with time charts, progressively pushed aside in the basement until the harnesses had finally emerged. "If you like."

"Now that I can go with!" she beamed. "What's your first number? Come on -- I'm your boss and I'm ordering you to tell me! I bet I can beat it first time out! Bet you -- an ice-cream bowl! A snout-deep one! And your snout, not mine, so we're playing for major stakes!"

"Ninety minutes, Scootaloo. Go to the first circle and start."

"Oh, I get it. You already know you're going to lose, so you don't even want to play..."

"And the longer you stall, the less time you have for double-checking the homework which you already finished."

"Oh... yeah... and ice cream!" More beaming, apparently having convinced herself that she was about to win a bet he'd never actually made. "Okay, here I go... hey, make sure you time me exactly on this! Because I'm going to get faster as I go, strength equals speed, right? Betcha by the last minute, I'm beating my time from the first, plus just beating you..."

He didn't comment: he just took the clockwork timer off the edge of the rockpile and waited for her to get into position. It wasn't a particularly long wait. "Go."

She went.

She was fast: he'd known that. There was already a decent amount of muscle power propelling those efforts, although it would be his job to make sure that development got balanced out --

-- no. It would be if we were keeping this up. We're not, and that's the best thing for her. Today might get her to drop out. A week, tops. That's the goal. She quits within seven days.

Still, until then, he was her trainer, and he did his job. He timed her lunges, noted exactly how the wings moved when accelerating and braking, kept an eye on her coat so he could gauge the exact levels of sweat while making sure nothing was heading towards froth, along with stopping any (multiple) attempts to turn straight-line movement into something more stunt-appropriate. During the cooldown periods, he paced her on hoof (while making sure she was moving slowly enough that he could), provided canteens to keep her hydrated while offering soft comments on wing movement adjustments. Those initially offended her -- after all, wasn't wing propulsion on a scooter her department? -- but she eventually began to show faint signs of listening, and even began to very briefly act on one or two ideas towards the absolute end.

Ninety minutes passed, and with surprising speed. He timed the final lunge, listened to Scootaloo's extensive denials after he told her it hadn't been any faster than the first, and finally let her know it was time to go home.

"And I'll see you tomorrow?" she eagerly insisted. "We'll get in the air tomorrow?"

"The next training session will be the day after tomorrow," he gently informed her.

"But I want --"

"-- for the start, it's one day on, one day off. That may change later." Again, not that they would get that far. "You just stressed your wings. They need time to recover."

"I feel fine! That was actually kind of fun!" She was smiling, and it seemed to be a truly happy one. Also sweating, but the froth had been avoided. "I can go again tomorrow!"

"Page three," he reminded her.

The pout was short-lived, but sincere. "Fine..." she echoed. "And now -- ice cream! Because I know I beat your times!"

Which would bring his total income down to something around five minutes. "Do you see those books on the rocks?" She glanced in that direction, mostly just to get it out of the way before heading off to ice cream, quickly nodded. "Load them in your saddlebags. Tonight before you go to bed, read the first two chapters in the red one. And be careful with them: I can't get replacement copies."

"Okay, okay... persimmon? It's coming into season!"

Snowflake resisted the urge to roll his eyes, considered how many of the townsponies would react when they saw him trotting along with her in mistaken quest for the frozen treat. Then thought about how some of them looked at him regardless, no matter who he was with or what he did.

She would be quitting within a week. Without strength. Without flight, even though that would be on the way at some point within what she would insist on seeing as forever....

"Vanilla with raspberry swirls and cashews."

"But --"

"-- if you're going to make a bet, make sure you dictate all the terms for winning. And losing."

"But I won!"

And the shock of the afternoon: he found himself grinning. "Wanna bet?"

The denial was expressed as briefly tilted-back ears. "Oh, whatever... you know I beat you and I'll just make sure I dictate the terms next time... raspberry and cashews, that's just gonna be disgusting..."

"You'll see. And we're going to talk about eating before we get there. What you're having day-to-day right now, and what you should be. A little sugar is fine today because you need the calories, but long-term..."

There wasn't going to be a long-term. But it was still sound advice. And she carefully ignored most of it all the way back into town.

Most.

[/hr]

It was easy to locate her house from the air. He noted the disheveled state of the backyard, which seemed to be mostly utilized as an in-town staging ground for minor Crusader activities and had the scorch marks to prove it. And then he pulled up a few concealing clouds and waited, better-hidden than Scootaloo had ever been, watching her front door through a tiny gap in the vapor.

Half an hour before school time, the inner lever was pushed down, and the filly emerged.

Very.

Slowly.

"Oooh..." she softly moaned -- then glanced around to make sure nopony else had heard it, never thinking to look up. The incomplete check told her that to the best of her partial knowledge, she was in the clear, and so she indulged in a second just like it, only louder. "Oh, Celestia, Luna, my sides..." She forced a hoof across the threshold. Then another. Getting the complete set to emerge took a while, and then she moaned again because she had to turn back in order to close the door and the rotation was more than she wanted to bear.

She moved as if her saddlebags weighed ten bales apiece. Dragged her legs as if each added an additional four. And Snowflake smiled to himself.

It wasn't just about the wings: it was about the muscles behind them. To a large degree, the aches were localized, and her body knew that. It just refused to let her brain in on the truth.

The first part of the price was being paid, and the initial installment had hit Scootaloo directly in that still-intact mantle. It would just feel as if the whole thing was about to fall off. And, after a few more hours of forcing herself through a normal school day, she would start wishing for it.

"Stupid Snowflake," she muttered, or would have if it hadn't turned into another soft sigh of deep hurt halfway through. "Stupid stallion, stupid harnesses, dumb seven pounds --" and much to his very great surprise "-- dumb and stupid books..."

The scooter was leaning against the side of the house. She forced herself towards it. Got on. Automatically flapped her wings. The resulting moan nearly put another hole in the clouds.

She slowly got off. Stared at the scooter with open (and misdirected) loathing for a while.

"Stupid, stupid -- everything..."

And forced herself, one pained hoofstep at a time, to head towards school, just barely moving at a pace which would eventually break never-late once and for all, with a chance to turn it into marked-absent.

Snowflake, who had warned Cheerilee an hour before, watched the filly's lack of progress for a while, then made a silent exit. The smile didn't start to fade until he was within a few flaps of the public works project and even then, he found himself relapsing a few times during the day, with occasional light, deep chuckles which always startled his temporary coworkers, who expected nothing more than a basic 'Yeah' here and there.

He had set the workout schedule. One day on. One day off. And a third to just barely drag herself into his tent and declare she never wanted to see him again.

[/hr]

And now it was that third day, with Snowflake waiting in his tent, not particularly further along in the book than before. Lunch was fast-approaching, and he was wondering where he was going to eat. Not in any restaurant, certainly: his income was still on the low side, and he had only himself to blame for that. After all, he'd been openly seen at the ice cream shop in the voluntary company of a Crusader, which just made the town think the danger zone was still parked within blue canvas which would be catching fire at any minute...

But he could live with that, at least short-term. Whatever tenuous client-employee relationship existed between them might be broken before the Sun was lowered. The town would understand she was done with him, and that before very long. Besides, she'd -- earned an ice cream bowl: minor repayment for the aches. He saw no harm in giving her one, even if she'd kept insisting on the stupidity of cashews just a little too strongly for actual belief.

However, until then, he was still on a tight budget, which meant eating out involved picking a pleasant spot to enjoy his fruit-and-hay salad, even if Mr. Flankington had offered him a free tryout of a new health drink, one which would prove just how healthy the drinker was because anypony who got through the whole tankard without needing a hospital was made from stern stuff indeed...

The tent flaps shifted. Not by much.

"I..."

"Yes, Scootaloo?" Keeping his tone gentle, without a trace of mockery. She didn't deserve that. She just hadn't understood.

"...about this afternoon... the workout..."

"What about it?" He had her bits ready to be returned.

"...if we do lunges again... are we keeping it at seven pounds per side, or are we going to eight?"

He blinked.

It seemed as if it took several minutes to locate his own voice deep within his massive form, and when it finally came out, much of it had been crushed into a tiny ball of surprise.

"We're... mostly going to be working on your legs today. Pushes and high jumps."

"Why?"

"Because liftoff isn't just wings. If you push off from the ground hard enough with your hooves, you can save your wings a little effort, and you'll need that later."

A slow nod. "Okay... but that's mostly. Any lunges?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"Eight pounds?"

"Seven."

"Seven and a half?"

"Seven."

"...fine. Just checking. See you in the field an hour after school lets out." The tent flaps began to shift again as she pulled her head out of the gap -- then stopped. "Can we go two hours this time? Before we get in the air?"

They weren't going to get in the air today. They were never going to get in the air at all... "We'll see how the training goes."

She shrugged, the movement mostly visible as a shift in fabric forced from the other side of the gap. And then there was a smile, a tiny one, as fast and fleeting as its owner, before the filly completely withdrew and the buzz of wings headed for the schoolhouse...

Snowflake rested on his bench for a time, long enough to nearly miss lunch entirely, thinking.

The Crusade produced chaos: everypony knew that. Some of that chaos turned into full-scale disasters, ones which required government relief forms followed by extensive repair efforts. But what everypony forgot (and this had included himself) was that the trio were frequently to be found within the debris field. The default state of a Crusader was 'battered'. They were generally at least a little bruised from their efforts, often wrapped in bandages, spent more time in the first aid area of the hospital than a few of the interns. And yet a few days (and sometimes hours) later, they would have found something new to fail at and be ready to Crusade again...

The trio bounced back fast. They had to, or the Crusade itself never would have gotten this far. It might be possible to dissuade Scootaloo from her goal with mere aches and pains -- but it would take a great deal more of both than it would for most ponies. Or she might just keep going down that air path forever, because the toll for doing so was a price she was already paying.

I should have thought of that. Right at the start. Too late now. He could ramp up the intensity as much as he dared without actually hurting her, but...

He might have to move into the second installment. The one she hadn't been paying any attention to during that late afternoon dip into cold sweetness and salt, caught up in false complaints about something she refused to admit she was actually enjoying. That which had been on open display, which simply had to be brought to her notice...

Not every pain was physical.

Presses

The little basement didn't bother him, really.

Claustrophobia was the second most common fear among pegasi. Snowflake didn't suffer from it. With his sheer mass, some spaces were always going to be more confined than they would have been for anypony else (excepting the Princesses): in such cases, he just tried not to sigh (because expanding his rib cage clearly wasn't going to help matters) and waited it out. He had no particular love of being crowded in, hardly relished being confined, and total immobilization was something dreaded by all with wings -- but just being under ground set off no alarms within him. Other pegasi normally would have seen that as being slightly odd, but nopony except Fluttershy (who had a basement of her own) had ever bothered getting to know him well enough to reach that particular bit of difference -- plus there was just so much other oddness to cover long before finding out about the little things.

With some time to use before meeting up with his (very temporary) student for her second lesson, he had gone back to the basement beneath his little house. There had been things he'd pushed aside during the search for his original library and starting harnesses, which included something he wanted to consult now -- because it had been years since he'd peered at those figures and the only way to be certain was through revisiting them.

Under the ground, and not a twinge of fear. He simply pushed piles from place to place, treating the entire quest as a room-sized sliding puzzle with only one clear space available, and he was generally occupying that...

...there.

He sorted through them until he found the very first. Noted the small tooth marks in the cover, matched those impressions as closely as he could, read the contents.

Well.

He thought about it for a while, then decided there was no real way to make a direct comparison. After all, she had her scooter, and that had to deal with wheels, axles, lubricant -- and ground, with all the interference that implied. Grass, rocks, small animals to swerve around or jump over, all added to a much higher friction coefficient. The differences accumulated quickly and made the scales into something impossible to balance. She had all of that to deal with when making her times, and all he'd had was --

-- something else.

It was not grouped among the piles, nor had it been consigned to a box. He'd hoof-hammered a pair of hooks into the wall and hung it in a place of honor.

Snowflake glanced up at it. Smiled, and held both position and expression for quite some time, for there was nothing wrong with old friends taking a moment to catch up with each other.

I could take it outside and use it.

The stray thought surprised him, although the internal mirth which banished it was much more expected. No, he couldn't. It no longer fit him. His mass was well above what it had been when he'd started: measuring the change would mean bringing in orders of magnitude. He could stand on it without breaking the thing, he was sure of that -- but hardly in the same posture as before: legs squeezed together, all hooves touching... He couldn't use it.

She could.

...no. There was too much risk involved. Scootaloo ran into buildings and trees and rocks and other ponies and, in one oft-retold example which only made the flourspout shoot higher into the sky with every repeat, the kitchen at Sugarcube Corner -- and none of that ever chanced having her fall, not more than the distance from the peak of the latest out-of-control leap. She couldn't pull out of a plummet, was incapable of even moderately slowing one, and Snowflake didn't want to be in a position where he was the only pegasus on safety duty, especially for a filly who didn't seem to know what caution was. Because he could fly, knew it, had spent a large portion of his life proving it to others again and again, but keeping the final proof locked within himself...

She doesn't think about the risks on the ground. She wouldn't do it in the air either.

There was a certain amount of hypocrisy beginning to nag at the back of his mind. He tried to ignore it and, when that failed, attempted to reason with it.

But I was good. I didn't fall.

Okay, not more than --

-- but my dad was always there, and hers...

Dad watched me. He didn't understand. I'm not sure he ever did, or even does now. But he made sure he watched me, as much as he had to, even when it took him away from other things, because he thought it was something he could do for me.

He didn't understand how clouds felt. How tacky they were under my hooves. How it always felt like I was sticking a little, or embedded, and the only times I ever felt right was when we were on some other surface in the sky, or visited ground, or --

Old friends.

Anyway, put it all together and there was truly no way to compare times, so it didn't really matter who had won the contest between decades, did it? He'd picked the ice cream. Call it trainer's privilege --

-- maybe if he talked to somepony who knew about that kind of science and got some numerical information on the friction differential between materials...

Later (if at all): he had to reach the training area and start getting things ready there. He'd already found the extra equipment for the day -- one measuring stick for exact gauges of vertical leaps, a tape for horizontal bounds -- but there was still some setup work to be done at the site. Best to get out of the basement, because it wasn't as if he was showing off for anypony by displaying how well he could deal with that confinement where so many others could not, much less how

comfortable

it could be...

...there was another book. Directly beneath his old friend, distinctive edge poking out of a recently-shifted box.

Snowflake blinked.

"Now how did you get in there?" the only voice which was ever heard in the little house softly asked. "I must have mispacked you during the move..."

No answer, of course, and he'd only been speaking to break the silence. But this one belonged upstairs, and so he gently took it between his teeth, careful to clamp down only on the reinforced corners, and brought it that much closer to Sun.

Time to head for the field and set things up for the workout. The lesson scheduled to follow it, the one which would get Scootaloo to quit... well, given any typical day in Ponyville, that would arrange itself...

[/hr]

Openly curious, with more than a hint of that longing suffusing every syllable. "What's the cloud for? Is that supposed to be a crash cushion or something? Because after we get in the air today, I'm not going to need that --"

He'd wrangled it down to ground level, compressed its mass until it was no more than seven hoofwidths thick, and then placed it three body lengths to the left of the lunge path. "Let me see your homework."

She ignored him: jumped off the scooter and trotted up to the edge of the cloud, poked at it with her left forehoof. "Come on, there's got to be a reason you stuck this at ground level. Am I bouncing on it? Kicking it into submission?" The purple eyes abruptly brightened. "Does any part of the lesson involve lightning?"

This time, the inner vision playing in Snowflake's private theater showed the interior of a courthouse, shackles around all four ankles, his entire body locked within a triple-strength freezer so as to prevent the creation of magic through movement, watching helplessly as every single resident of Ponyville presented him with the civil suit judgment bill for the electrical damage to their homes. And then the swirling storm of bankruptcy forms came back for their second round.

"No." He'd just barely kept his voice level on that one. "But as long as you're high-jumping, I thought we'd get in two kinds of practice at once. Have you had any chance to do density shift training?"

The confusion twisting her face provided the answer. "Density..."

"Choosing whether to let a cloud be solid or vapor to your touch."

She shook her head. "I've touched a couple, when I was -- boosted... but I really haven't tried to drop through one on purpose. I mean... when you..." and it wasn't so much a trailoff as a desperate hope that he'd never inquire about the missing portion of the sentence.

Can't fly. But he would never say it aloud. "So for some of your high-jumps, you won't be going straight up. We'll try to get you landing on the cloud. You'll also do a few leaps starting from that surface. And then we'll see if you can let yourself sink through slowly and reach the ground that way, instead of jumping down. Don't expect to get that right away, Scootaloo, and don't blame yourself if it doesn't work: this isn't something I generally teach, plus you need to have some sense of your own field." He wasn't sure he could teach it: passing along the proper feel was hardly within his normal range -- but making the attempt had just seemed right. "And for a filly your age... your own field was preset at birth to make solid into the default, until you grew up enough to take control of it. It takes effort to turn that aspect of your magic off, and it's not going to be a casual one for the first few times out. I know a lot of adult pegasi who still have trouble doing it, especially in a hurry, and there are a few who never get it to work. Your field is going to treat it as an inherent risk, and that can mean you wind up fighting against yourself to make it happen."

A slow nod, along with a surprising moment of silent thought. Part of the latter eventually reached her voice. "Does it work with anything that's been molded?"

"It works on streets: the planners know to leave a loophole for it. But not with buildings." Having walls and ceilings permeable to plummeting pegasi just wasn't good for anypony's security -- but there were also times when it was better to give up on the landing, plunge through the surface you'd been about to crash into, and reorient a little below. Given the way Scootaloo tended to steer when she was on the ground, he was guessing it was a technique she was going to need, and frequently. If he could just manage to teach the thing and even then, as he'd said, it wasn't the sort of thing most pegasi mastered after a single try. They only had four days remaining. At best -- no, worst.

"And if you bounce up and down on the cloud instead --" the eyes were a little too bright "-- you get lightning? Like what that one mare does --'

"-- there's more to it than that."

"Like what? Oh, come on, you can tell -- and you're just going to stand there with that dumb little smile on your face, not saying anything, forever." A snort of annoyance, which still thankfully had no ability to turn into one of ion-charged destruction. "Okay... lunges, jumps, pushes, density shifts..."

"And letting me see your homework. Or we won't be starting any of the others."

"I did it."

"Then let me see it."

Six failed excuses later, she did. And she had in fact done the work, at least in the sense that ink had landed on the page in several places and if somepony was sufficiently imaginative, desperate, or concussed, it might be possible to make out the patterns of multiple completely wrong answers within. Snowflake took thirty minutes to go over the relevant sections of the textbook with her, which included the four required before she actually began reading any of it in a supremely bored voice which had no interest in proper emphasis on anything. An additional ten were required before she made all the necessary corrections, which was altogether enough to let him start the laborious process of learning to decipher any part of what was quite possibly Equestria's Worst Mouthwriting.

She was a good jumper, although her vertical leap would need some work before it caught up to the horizontal. There hadn't been enough time (and there would never be) for the lunges to show any improvement, no matter how loudly she insisted to the contrary. Her pushes were actually on the strong side for her age. And sinking... she didn't get it the first time out, or the tenth, and even though he hadn't expected her to, he was still starting to blame himself well before the twelfth came around.

"We're done, Scootaloo. I want to reach the restaurant before the dinner shift starts to arrive, and that means heading in now."

"I can get this!" she insisted from her position on the edge of the cloud. "I'm not jumping down this time! I'm going to sink! Just watch me! It's just -- shifting my field, like you said -- wait. Restaurant?"

"It's still also about having that sense of your field. If that hasn't really started to come in yet, you're not going to get this." He knew he'd told her that before. The current theory was that if he repeated something twenty times, there was a chance for one to get through.

The theory hadn't found anything approaching a level of hard-won proof yet, and this iteration got blocked along with all the rest. "Restaurant? Not ice cream?"

"We're going to try a salad today. A balanced one. Your parents know you're eating with me -- I left another note." Three minutes of total earnings for the job and dropping, which was assuming he didn't eat, and as for whether those unseen adults had ever read anything at all... "Just hop down."

"One more."

"It's your eighth one-more."

"It'll be the last."

"It's the seventh time you've said that."

"Is that a weight on your flanks or a really weird looking ledger?"

"Scootaloo."

She ignored him. Her eyes squeezed shut, the fur on her forehead shifted as the brow underneath furrowed. Her tail flicked twice, she concentrated...

...she sank.

Not much. A single hoof-height and as soon as she became aware of it, the descent froze.

"I..."

"Keep your eyes closed, Scootaloo." It had almost been a whisper. "Don't think about anything but the feel. Just let it happen..."

Slowly, so very slowly, her legs vanished within the cloud. There was a tiny clicking sound of hoof impacting pebble.

"...I'm... I'm down."

He nodded. Remembered she couldn't see him. "Yes." It was a simple word, and all the more so for the astonishment he'd managed to keep out of it. On her first lesson... "You're down."

"If I can get down --" the excitement was building again, her now-open eyes dancing "-- I can get up! Let's stay! You just watch me, I'm going to jump just like you taught me, then I'll flap and I'll just stay --"

"-- we're done for the day, Scootaloo." Because it wasn't going to happen today, or two days from now, not under his watch at all... but it would happen. He knew it. And he wondered if she was starting to believe it too.

But not my way. Hers.

He had to get her back into town so the real lesson could begin.

"But I want --"

"-- do I have to start quoting contract pages?"

Her face immediately flashed into fury. The tail transitioned from flicks to full-scale lashes. He quietly held his ground and waited it out.

"...oh, fine... stupid salad and then I'll go home..." Her shoulders and hips shifted, and not by much. "...um..."

Softly, trying not to smile, "Yes?"

"...I think I'm stuck..."

[/hr]

He'd scouted the site carefully, keeping in mind the duration of the workout, travel time, any possible homework examination period (which had run over) and visibility. It was that part of the spring where those eateries with outdoor courtyards had begun to reopen them and allow patrons to dine outside, although a few still kept torches burning around the perimeter to warm the air as Sun dropped towards the horizon or, in the case of Mr. Flankington's ambushed customers, to dispose of the mistake.

They were a little later in arriving than he would have liked -- but that was actually working to his advantage. They'd missed the majority of the group trot home for Ponyville's local commuters, but there were still a few coming in from the train station and, on a pleasant spring night, other ponies were just choosing to enjoy the air before it became too chill: friends and couples trotting about, trying to settle on a place to eat...

There was pony traffic, and he had reserved a table which left them completely visible to all of it.

Admittedly, there had almost been some trouble in claiming it. Many of Ponyville's business establishments refused to serve the Crusaders. Some were trying to issue restraining orders with cushioning barriers of at least twenty body lengths, which didn't leave a whole lot of street to trot down. But she'd been with him, and when the server had still tried to pretend he'd never heard of the reservation... Snowflake had looked at him. Just looked. No words, no shifting of weight: just a simple, calm red gaze in the specific direction of a much smaller pony, one who seemed to lose additional size with every moment of direct regard.

He hated doing that. But there were times when it was necessary, and for this lesson to work at all...

"Are you going to eat this stuff too? When it actually shows up?"

He shook his head.

"You'll eat at home or something?"

"Yeah."

"Salad?"

He thought about it. "...yeah."

She frowned at him. "You really don't talk much when you're in public, do you?"

A shrug.

The most immediate border torch was on his right. There were very few patrons visible in any other direction: after all, there was a Crusader in the area and where Snowflake had silently insisted on his reservation, others had quietly canceled theirs. But there was street traffic, and that was the important thing. He had no need to talk. The inevitable was approaching, and too much speech from him before it started would only give her something else to hear.

He listened, focused past the low crackle of the flame. (Pegasi establishments had a different way of keeping customers warm, and it was completely silent.) Any minute now...

"You look kind of like you're waiting for somepony," Scootaloo observed, and it shocked him. "Is anypony else eating with us?"

Another head shake.

"...whatever. Why does a dumb salad take so long to make? The owner has a mark for that: shouldn't the stuff come out in seconds? Maybe it's just a talent for overcharging..."

She grumbled to herself a little more, stared back at the gate which led to the interior, kitchen, and a server who was stalling as long as possible in the desperate hopes that the occupants of the table would simply give up and go away.

It gave Snowflake's other guests time to arrive.

The pitch of the tones had been chosen more carefully than the words: carry perfectly, reach every ear in the vicinity, make it absolutely clear as to which ponies were speaking while still giving them a chance for smirking denial if somepony actually confronted them, not to mention running room...

"Well, that's unexpected, isn't it? I didn't know they were letting manticores eat in town... oh, wait, it's just him. Of course, they're around the same bulk, so it's a natural mistake..."

A giggle. "No, you should still apologize -- to the manticore. Everypony knows they're much smarter."

"They're mindless beasts," the first giggled back.

"That's what I said! Much smarter!"

Two mares. Late teens, from the sounds of them. And on any other day, he would have focused his attention on anything else, done his best not to listen as the words sank in regardless -- but for this one, they were perfect.

Scootaloo's head, which had been on the verge of using the table as a pillow, jerked up. She started to look in that direction --

-- his right foreleg unfolded, straightened out beneath the table and gently poked one of her hooves. She stopped moving.

Neither mare had noticed. And if they had, they would have been pleased. Reaction was the goal, after all.

"So what do you think? Daughter? Maybe that's why the Crusade keeps going: he's too stupid to know it's happening at all..."

"You're terrible! Besides, he would have been how many years old? I heard he's around Fluttershy's age..."

"You're right. Plus he'd never figure out how. He can work on every muscle except the one in his skull. I don't know what that bundle of tremble sees in him..."

With happy bluntness, "Another freak. What else?"

And now he was having trouble staying on his bench. He'd been expecting this, although not quite so much of it or this quickly. It happened -- well, not every day, for there were times when he simply wasn't around enough other ponies for it to start. But with the young, the snide, those convinced that the best way to prove their own perfection was by pointing out the opposite in everypony else, and the ones who could simply never reconcile the different...

He was used to it. All of it -- when it was personal. It was the attacks on his near-sister and temporary student which had muscles tensing all over his body, and it took a true effort to keep his wings out of the challenge position -- something he knew only looked ridiculous.

"So that's the same reason he's got her out to dinner! Freaks together!"

And it was Scootaloo who lunged, whose wings flared out as the fury-flushed head dropped and the legs pushed away from the bench, hooves landing in full pre-charge pose...

"Don't."

It had almost been a whisper (and yet it was enough to make Scootaloo freeze). It had barely been audible to his own ears, and it would have had to do some major work to get past the mock shriek of twinned terror which had come from the two teens. But still, somehow, they had heard it.

"It's a miracle! He's learned a second word!"

"She's not his daughter! She's his tutor! Cheerilee's going to have him crammed behind a desk! One breath and everypony in the class will get impaled by flying wood --!"

Which was enough for that particular round.

Snowflake turned his head and looked at the teens. Very briefly, just enough to quietly register their colors and marks.

Another pair of shrieks, ones quite not so faked. And then they galloped away giggling, with the mirth only managing to fool themselves.

Slowly, Scootaloo's head rotated until her eyes were on him again. The rest of her body remained ready to charge. "You're not going to do anything? -- no, don't just shake your head again! You heard all of that! You can't just sit there and ignore it!"

Softly, "What am I supposed to do?"

"Fight them! You're strong and they're not! You could --"

"-- kick children. Hurt them. Over words."

Breathing heavily now, her heaving ribs expressing a rage which seemed to have more than the recent encounter powering it. "So that's what you do with bullies? Just ignore them, thinking they'll get bored and go away --"

"-- they don't." The quiet voice of experience. "If you react to a bully, they know they can make you react, and so they keep finding things which make it come out, over and over. But if you ignore them, then it becomes a challenge. They decide there's something out there which will do the trick, and they only have to find it. Some gallop a long way to get the thing which will work. Ignoring doesn't solve anything. It just makes them feel it'll be more fun when the quiet finally breaks."

"But... but if they're your own age... and you fight..."

"...then I'm bigger. Stronger. Which means most ponies see me as the bully. I'm alone: they travel in packs. Their stories claim innocence and support each other. Mine is singular. Weight of numbers means more than just weight."

Her tail drooped. The mane seemed to collapse on itself. All four knees sagged. "Then... even when you're an adult... you can't make it stop? There's nothing which makes them stop? You can't scare them, you can't fight them, you can't... anything...?"

Snowflake shook his head, watched the defeat soak into the orange coat.

He hated this. He wished she'd quit when the aches came in. Had never come into his tent at all. He'd said the words then, given more than a hint of it. But with this filly... she wouldn't listen, and that meant she had to see...

"Why...?" she helplessly asked. "Why would they still... even for an adult... with you..."

"Because I look like this." And before she could try to ignore, dismiss, or insist against any part of it, "The way you want to look."

Eventually, the salad arrived. She picked at it, nudged ingredients aside with hooves and nose, rearranged the contents so that the total amount of food wound up looking exactly like somepony hadn't eaten a single piece of it and had no idea how to conceal that fact. And while they sat there... while she refused to take in the calories her body so badly needed, all desire for the simple joy of food negated by misery... more ponies passed them. Some spoke. None quite so blatantly as the first two, several in low hushed tones which were probably nothing more than private discussions, things her ears would be only too ready to recognize as something else. But for some of those who gave more open voice -- there were jokes, and none of the fun was meant to be shared with the target of it.

Once he'd seen that the reaction had fully set in, he paid for the food and, knowing exactly what the server had been up to, completely ignored the tip. And then he walked her home.

He stayed on the ground, keeping pace with her. She kept her gaze on the street, saw no part of it. She refused to acknowledge his presence at all, lost in visions of mockery-filled years to come.

But there was still a way out of it for her, and she would take it. A silent night of misery, denied tears soaked into a pillow which surely must have become wet from something else entirely, and then she would see it. All she had to do if she wanted to avoid every last phantom encounter was quit. Take the bits back, never think about strength training or lunges or him, especially him, ever again. Go back to a normal life and in time, fly the normal way.

He had saved her.

And he hated himself for it.

[/hr]

Sun was just about completely lowered: Moon would be making an appearance at any minute. They were almost at her home: it was starting to become visible towards the far end of the street. No lights glowed from any window, nothing seemed to welcome the approaching travelers. It simply loomed, waiting for its chance at failing to confine the approaching pain.

"So I'll see you the day after tomorrow?"

No answer, which was the perfect (and, for a moment, the perfectly loathed) one --

"-- does anypony sink all the way?"

He froze.

She still wasn't looking at him. Her head remained down, she continued her slow trot forward, and the closed eyes were not wet, at least not in a way she would, even now, consider admitting to. "Does anypony ever just stand in the street, or their backyard, or anyplace which hasn't been molded, and just -- sink? All the way through, until there's nothing under them but air until the moment there's ground and no stupid butterflies show up and make you start singing, you just fall and keep your wings, stupid useless wings, pressed to your sides until you don't have to..."

"Scootaloo --"

A whisper. "Do they?"

He needed words. More than anything else in his life, anything which he had ever longed for in the past, dreamed about, prayed for, he needed the words which would turn it all around, make the experience he had subjected her to not have happened, bring her back to that confidence laced with arrogance and the certainty that hers was the right way and everypony else would see the proof when the Crusade finally paid off in a glorious tripled moment of manifest. But he hadn't spoken much as a colt, for few others cared to listen. Barely had anypony to converse with as an adult. He could find words -- but not always in time, not the right ones if any even existed for this, and...

...she just kept trotting, getting further and further away during every desperate moment of futile search, receding as he remained frozen under deepening shadows.

There were no words.

There was only laughter.

"Hey, look! The blank flank is on her way home, or whatever we're all supposed to pretend is it! What's wrong, Scootaloo... no mark again today? Or any day? I've got an anniversary coming up in a few moons..."

A giggle. It was a filly sound this time, young and delighted and completely pleased with itself, with every last one of those qualities adding an extra layer to the sickness. This was joined by a little laugh from a second voice, for they almost always traveled in packs.

He could see them up ahead. One pink, one grey. Glints of fading Sun bouncing from lenses and tiara.

Scootaloo didn't answer. She just kept shuffling along.

The pink one burst into a short gallop, got in front of her, blocked the front gate. "Where are you going? To talk to your parents again? Oh, I forgot -- where are they supposed to be this time? Las Pegasus? Baltimare? San Dineighgo? Trotter's Falls? Anywhere they don't have to be embarrassed by their blank-flank failure -- or are they hiding?" A sudden surge of delight. "Because they never want anypony to see them, not just because of you, but because they're blank-flanks too, it's in your blood and you'll never have a mark, any mark at all, maybe it's even a disease and you gave it to your stupid friends!"

Scootaloo's head came up for a moment, just enough to see the smirking filly in her way. She turned, started to move along the fence. Heading for the back gate.

The pink one got in front of her again. "Oh, don't leave now! I haven't seen you for a few afternoons, and I only heard stuff blowing up the once... where have you been? Finding a place to give up, or cry, or maybe a chicken coop so you can live with all the other flightless --"

The little tremor reached the speaker, vibrated up through her hooves, traveled through her legs, shook the mane and sent the tiara slightly askew.

Snowflake took another step forward. That made everything worse.

He had been in shadow: they hadn't seen him. But now he was within those last rays of Sun, set off by rose hues and pinks and gold flaring from hooves and earrings, blocking out any light which might have reached them...

"...yeah?" he softly asked.

They stared. The grey one took a hoofstep back. The pink rallied.

"You can't touch us," she confidently declared. "You couldn't any other time and you can't now. You're an adult and my Daddy's got lawyers, anything you say, they'll say different and you only say the one thing to begin with, nopony would ever believe you about anything and her... everything she and her dumb friends do, everything they destroy...

Another step. This one made the glasses slip.

The pink didn't break. "You can't." And there was a laugh in it, a delighted and mocking one. "Everypony knows you can't!"

Snowflake nodded. "Yeah."

And he didn't.

His techniques... he had only the most basic, and those at low strength. His own field had tested out to be below average: he simply couldn't power the more advanced aspects of pegasus magic, and there had been times when he worried about even adding his portion to a group effort, from fears that his weakness would somehow make something crucial go wrong.

His wings flared out, flapped.

Both fillies stared at the sight. Giggled --

-- the gust hit.

Wind whipped dirt and dust into the pink one's eyes, splattered the glasses of the grey. Manes were rearranged.

"HEY!" the pink one yelled. "STOP THAT! YOU CAN'T TOUCH --!"

"-- I'm not," Snowflake said. And as they froze in shock at the words, he flapped his wings again. And again.

Poor techniques. A below-average field. But he'd been able to do his part for the waterspout effort despite all his worries... because you simply weren't a pegasus if you couldn't manage a little wind. All wind creation required was putting your own strength into the air. And with his field at work on it, the process was decidedly inefficient -- but when it came to strength...

The gusts came faster, stronger. Scootaloo, facing away from the source, head down, was protected, especially as Snowflake was aiming high. But the other two...

"STOP IT!" the pink screamed as her manestyle completely came apart. "I ORDER YOU TO --!"

The tiara blew off her head.

The intricate weave hit the ground a split-second before the glasses.

"...my tiara." Nearly all the volume had vanished: there was just enough left to convey the shock. "You... you might have broken my --"

Snowflake quizzically tilted his head slightly to the right. Brought his wings back.

The sound of desperate galloping was twinned, short-lived, and came with shattering glass as the pink one, who only cared about getting one end of her precious accessory safely in her mouth, paid absolutely no attention to the other lost item.

Snowflake didn't give chase: there was no reason, and even less point. Speaking of weight of numbers... He knew her father, had worked for the stallion a few times, respected him -- and still knew the only number that parent ever listened to was one.

"You... you made them go away..."

Scootaloo's voice was weak. There was barely enough strength to carry the astonishment, and at that, it was a weight she couldn't seem to keep aloft.

He burst into a short gallop, ran to her side. "How often does that happen? They've made their share of jokes about me, especially Diamond, but I've never seen them go after a filly." Not that he was surprised. "When do they usually try it? Is there a place where they try to intercept --"

Her head came up, and the light in freshly Moon-lit eyes nearly stopped every word there could ever be.

"-- that's the answer!" It was almost a shout, and it was one of triumph.

"...what?"

"You're too strong to fight for yourself! So you just fight for everypony else!" Dawning wonder threatened to return Sun to the sky. "That's how you fight when you're strong! You defend your friends, and you know that because you can't kick or bite or anything else, if it gets really bad, they'll defend you!"

She threw herself against his forelegs. The little body pressed itself there, held the position, air being taken in with sharp, welcome gasps of relief.

And he was frozen. He couldn't move. He didn't know what to do. There were no words, no actions, certainly no feats of strength to fix this. All he could do was take her weight and wait.

"I have friends," Scootaloo whispered, "and they'll stay my friends, they'll always be my friends no matter what I look like or how strong I am, they've been with me for all the Crusades and the explosions and the stupid tree sap... they'll fight for me, any time I need them to, and... it'll be okay..."

Her face was against his chest now. The tears were soaking into his coat.

"Nopony... nopony ever sinks... do they?"

He lowered his head, tried not to let his knees bend too much under an intangible mass which somehow seemed too heavy, still found his chin in contact with her mane.

"Somepony," he gently said, "always catches them."

[/hr]

She did not invite him inside to meet anypony: she simply trotted happily through the entrance into the dark hallway, closed and locked the door behind her. And the instant he was certain she wasn't peering out of any window or trying to watch him in any way, Snowflake facehoofed.

As such things went, it was an extremely careful and decidedly empathetic facehoofing. It was cautious, for the power behind that hoof could split a skull. But it was also solid, had some reverberation to it, and said everything which words could not -- excepting the three echoing in his mind.

I'm an idiot.

Of the two who had approached the dark house, which was incapable of doing more with spoken words than passing them through at top speed while never paying any attention to the meanings within? The one standing dumbstruck under Moon, impacted by his own sheer stupidity. She'd said it on the first day, right there in the tent.

'I have friends.'

She had a support system. Others who would carry her burdens, comfort her, fight for her when the need arose, accept her no matter what happened... she'd said that part too...

In that regard, Scootaloo had everything which a young Snowflake had not. And it made her stronger than he was. He couldn't scare her off with the fear of alienation because there were already those around who would not leave her, not through all the pains and failures of the Crusade, and such a bond could never be broken by mere muscle.

But for that... she was stronger than he. And perhaps it meant she could continue with the training after all, even on his road (not that such would be necessary), except for all the frilly gross adult stuff which she didn't care about -- right up until the moment she discovered every last chance at it had been forever closed to her...

Three days down.

Not pain, for she fought through and past that every day in the name of the Crusade. Not isolation, for that battle was conducted with a filly on each side...

Nopony had stopped the Crusade. Nothing would except the manifestation of three marks.

There had to be a way of stopping a Crusader. Somewhere, somehow, and quickly, because if he didn't think of it...

Strong like me.

It was a weight he wouldn't be able to carry.

Spotting

"...and what happened after they arrested you?"

Snowflake allowed himself the luxury of a deep sigh, then flipped the page of the feline anatomy textbook with his teeth and tried to look at it for a while before answering. Somehow, the various rotation views of whiskers as seen by dim cottage light weren't providing much in the way of comfort. "It really wasn't much of an arrest, Fluttershy. More of a detainment. Diamond galloped to the police and said -- a lot of things. The problem for her might be she's said them a few times before this. The officers never directly said so, but I got the impression she might have been repeating a few lies from previous incidents. Still -- I'm an adult, she's a child, and they asked me to come down to the station until they could bring her father in." Most of Ponyville's badge carriers had shown up at his house to request the trip, and every one of them had looked just a little bit nervous about the prospect. His calm trot had done a lot to defuse the situation, especially since the precinct didn't have a freezer large enough for him. "So I just sat there for about two hours, until Mr. Rich finally arrived. And -- I talked to him, and..." A slow breath. "...I swear what I'm about to tell you next is true. You might have a hard time believing it. I'm still having some trouble. But it happened, Fluttershy, and I never thought it would."

Curiously, "...what?"

"He believed me."

The obscuring manefall meant his near-sister's blink was only visible on the left eye. "...he -- he what? Mr. Rich came to the precinct himself, not one of the servants, and he... believed you?"

A slow nod. "He... he's tired, Fluttershy. I've worked for him a few times. I like working for him, because he's a pony who respects his workers. But I know what his blind spot is, and the filly who occupies it. Or I thought I did. But he's tired. I'd never seen him that tired. I told him everything that happened, and he just listened. When I was done... he signaled the officers, and he told them there wouldn't be any charges pressed, to drop anything Diamond might have tried for, and then he thanked me. Just before he walked out of the station, and he walked. He couldn't even trot. Something's happening, Fluttershy. I think -- he may be at the same point as the officers. He's heard a few stories too many, they've started to repeat, and -- I think he's finally seeing the pattern. I think he might be on the verge of seeing Diamond. And when that happens..."

"...it'll hurt," Fluttershy softly continued. "...it'll make him tired. And then... he'll have to deal with her. It's been a long time coming, and... that just makes me feel sorrier for him. I don't know if there's anything left which could even be fixed... But at least for you -- the important part is that you're okay, and nothing happened to Scootaloo --"

"-- she's not okay." The ancient squirrel who was snoozing in the small of his back briefly stirred, then curled up again. "She's not going to be okay until she quits, until I know she'll never be like me. She should have quit already, and I don't know what I can still do. I set the goal: get her to quit within a week. And I could usually get somepony to flee just on aches after that first workout. But today's the fourth day, I'm still seeing her tomorrow, I set the goal, and -- it's not happening. I don't know if I can make it happen, and that's with my mark..."

His chin arced forward, nudged the book closed, and he closed his eyes. There were visions playing again, and too many of them featured a Scootaloo who looked like him in build, as much as an adult mare body would allow and with the addition of normal wings. Sitting in a bar, attending a dance, approaching ponies. Sometimes with her friends at her sides, at the start. But always leaving with her friends. Nopony else at all, ever. Always -- alone.

"...your mark?"

She was one of the few who knew. "I set the goal. It should be happening."

She trotted a little closer, smiled. "Snowflake... that's not how it works. I know it's your mark, and... I know it's a rare talent. A powerful one. Determination."

Shift the weight.

Move the burden.

Overcome.

"But it applies to your own efforts," Fluttershy continued. "The things you personally try to accomplish. Physical things. You can't make your magic stronger just because you want to. You can't influence other ponies, not that I've ever seen, and I'm sure you know that. You're just frustrated because... you're so worried about her. And you want something to blame, so... you blame your magic, your mark, yourself... but you're not looking at it the right way. You're so worried that you're not thinking about things, not the way I see them. Right now, you're sort of like Mr. Rich... so can I be you? Just for a few minutes, just to tell you what you need to see? And maybe... even hear?"

He took several long breaths, felt the sheer mass being shifted on each, tried to banish the ever-present odor of the cottage (dozens of animal sprays coated with every cleaning agent known to ponies, none of which were ever enough to completely work) and failed. "If there's anything you think I'm missing -- please."

"...well... to start..." She carefully sat down on the other side of the low-set study table. "...even if your mark did work with other ponies, somehow, and I'm pretty sure it can't... did you ever wonder what would happen if... you went up against the same talent?"

He stared at her.

"Are you -- no, I know you're serious, but what would make you think --"

"-- I know Apple Bloom started the Crusade, but... Scootaloo controls the direction so much of the time. I think... she's the one who keeps it going. The leader, in those times when they have one. And there's two things you can say about her, and the first one is that when you think about it... she's very determined."

He blinked. It was nearly all he could do.

"Then -- she won't quit," Snowflake said, and the words felt all too close to surrender. "If I was up against myself -- I wouldn't have quit. I never quit, no matter what my parents and classmates and teachers thought. I pushed all the way to the end, to my mark and beyond. Even if I refused to keep training her, she'd keep going. She's going to be like me, Fluttershy, and nopony should ever be like me. She's going to be --"

He couldn't say it, and knew she still heard the word.

alone

He sighed.

"And on top of that, I'm going to be bankrupt."

Which got him another smile. "...no. You won't be."

"They're already avoiding me because they know she's with me. My tent isn't seeing enough traffic. The longer I stay near her, the worse that's going to become. Ponies talk --"

"-- yes, they do." With just the tiniest hint of tease and decidedly more in the way of open pride, "Would you like to know what they're saying?"

That the freaks belong together.

"...they're saying -- you're immune."

And in his shock, all he could do was echo her. "...what?"

"Snowflake... ponies gossip. A lot. And some of them gossip here. They don't want to think about... what could happen to their companions if everything doesn't work out. So they talk about anything that pops into their heads. Anything everypony is talking about in town. Rarity loves it, because I always have something to tell her. And they're talking... about you. Because she followed you for two days, and nothing happened. You were seen with her twice after that, and nothing happened. And not only that... she's with you during hours when she normally would have been with the other two. She has less time for Crusading. So nothing's happened to you -- and less is happening to everypony else. Nopony wants to believe you're the cure for the Crusade, because there's still two other fillies and nopony they'll pay real attention to. But they think you're moderating it. Making everything a little safer. A few... think you're shielding, defending us, and I know how silly that is, you have to hear how silly it can be when they say it... but they think you might be immune. And a pony who's immune to the Crusade... is kind of a pony you'd want to hire... don't you think?"

She was still smiling.

He was reeling. Disoriented, as if he'd taken his maximum one-push weight, increased it by one vital half-bale, and then tried to do all the movement with his head. "They really think --"

"-- they really do. They'll be back in your tent, Snowflake, whether she stays or not. Soon. But... she won't stay. Because you're forgetting another part of the Crusade. And this one just doesn't come from Scootaloo: they're all guilty of it -- but she's as bad as they are, worse sometimes. It keeps the Crusade going, as much as anything else, sends them to their next failure. She's determined, Snowflake, maybe as much as you ever were... but she's also something else, something you've never really been, at least until you had her to deal with..."

A small white rabbit ran up to the table. Glared at Snowflake for daring to take so much of his mistress' time, squealed once, and dashed off.

"What?"

She told him.

And after his own training ended, he went home to wait.

[/hr]

There was a knock on his door. The second in two days, although this one came with considerably less hooves waiting on the other side. Still... a rare event. But this time, it was a rare event he'd been waiting for, especially as he'd heard the telltale squeaking a few seconds before the oddly cautious hoof impact.

His left forehoof pushed down on the lever.

"Hello, Scootaloo."

The purple eyes were still tilted up towards him, but that gaze seemed less steady than usual. "Can I come in?"

"Do your parents know you're here?"

"They --" She took a deep, reinforcing breath, and seemed to have lost the awareness that anypony seeing it would be aware that was exactly what it had been. "-- yes."

"All right, then." He opened the door the rest of the way. "Not for too long, though. I don't want them getting worried."

She slowly trotted in, looking about the place as if -- well, not as if she owned it. More like she was trying to figure out why he did.

"I thought you'd have more stuff than this," she said, briefly glancing at a closed book resting on a small table, the volume he'd recovered from the basement.

"Why?"

"I don't know. Because you're an adult. Because you've got a job and you can buy stuff."

He shrugged. "A lot of it is still in the basement. I'm -- a slow unpacker." Which was a truly drastic understatement: he was approaching his two-year anniversary in Ponyville. But he still had full boxes, because moving was a hassle, loading and unloading twin nightmares which just about justified their own capital, and --

-- part of him was waiting for the day he would have to move back out.

Briefly startled. "You have a basement?"

"It came with the house."

"And you use it?"

It wasn't a situation which called for anything even remotely resembling bragging. Instead, he simply repeated, "It came with the house."

A little more trotting, and then she stopped. Her eyes came up to meet his face, but only briefly. "I -- was trying some things out today. During recess and lunch."

He listened.

"Jumping. Lunging. Flapping. And..."

He waited.

"...I don't feel any different. Other than when I'm feeling sore. I feel -- the same. Just like I always do, when I'm on my scooter and I'm trying to get my wings going just enough that when a jump puts me in the air, I'd stay there and..."

There was Sun coming in through the little windows, illuminating the living room which no guest had inspected until that day. Very little of it seemed to reach her.

"...I'm not good at this. At -- being like you."

"It takes time, Scootaloo."

She seemed to ignore that, continued to speak, more quickly, with doubled insistence and trebled pain, with all of that last denied. "If I was any good at it, I'd be good already! I'd be good at the moment I started, and then I'd just keep getting better! If I'm not good by now, then -- I'll never be any good at this, it won't work for me, and -- I'm sorry, I tried, I really did, I stuck with it for two whole lessons, but..."

Her gaze was all the way to the floor now, but it didn't stay there for long.

"...I'd know if I was good. Because..."

She glanced at her right flank. At the orange fur with no other colors marking it.

And he didn't look, not long enough for her to register that he'd seen the glance at all. Because he knew that would hurt her, and it was something he never wanted to do.

Fluttershy had been right.

"...she's impatient."

It was part of why the Crusade failed over and over. Because the fillies thought the results would be instant, or nearly so. They would begin their chosen activity believing that one or more would turn out to be an immediate expert, not-quite-manifested magic pointing the way into skill without learning. And when failure came on any one thing, no matter what the cause had been -- they abandoned that particular pursuit. The Crusade went on -- but the individual crusades stopped after that first fatal flaw appeared, for there were still more skills ahead to fail at. They wouldn't wait. They refused to consider those things which they had a little interest in, anything they already liked and showed some talent at, and push those to the point where perfection might emerge. Instead, they had concluded that because those activities had not yet produced marks, they never would, and so were not worth improving. They ignored the best parts of themselves in favor of simply rushing on to the next disaster. And the next, and the next, and the next...

Scootaloo was determined, perhaps as much as he'd ever been. But it was determination poorly focused, squinting ahead in a way which carefully blurred sight, prevented her from reading more than the first chapters in books, planning for a second attempt at anything where the failure had been less than total, or -- simply taking the things she was already good at, trying to make herself better at them, and -- waiting.

"Not before, not first!"

"I'm sick of waiting and trying and -- and this should have happened already, everypony else, this has to happen now!"

And as long as she continued to believe that... the Crusade would go on.

"I'll go get your bits," he gently said. They were in a small jar in his bedroom, waiting for their next trip to the tent. Separated, unspent. "You can bring my books back to me tomorrow." He turned, began to trot. And behind him, the words came out, words he knew he'd never been meant to hear.

"Why -- why does everything have to be so hard?"

He had an answer for that. But it was something she would never truly hear, no matter how dearly he wished she would.

In a way, it had been -- nice, training her, for as long as she had been able to last. But had it ever truly been training, with a student who wouldn't learn?

Snowflake went into the bedroom, looked around for the jar -- which was nowhere in sight. He frowned. Now where had he -- oh, right: loaded into his saddlebags for the trip to the tent. He went over, flipped the lid, began to rummage, got the jar out, started to turn back --

-- and that was when the scream came.

His head spun. His mouth opened. The glass shattered as it hit the floor, and he instinctively vaulted the shards as he galloped back to his living room to find --

-- Scootaloo. The book. He'd left a filly who became bored easily in the presence of a book, and while some might feel it took truly epic boredom for Scootaloo to seek distraction in the written word, that level of combined impatience and exasperation was generally achieved in about ten seconds. So she'd flipped the cover --

-- to find no words waiting at all.

She was staring. Shaking. Every feather vibrating at the same rate. Barely aware he was there at all, focused on something else.

"Why -- why would somepony take a picture like that? Why would anypony ever...?"

All she'd done was flip the cover. To the very first photo in the album.

Snowflake didn't look at it. He knew the image by heart.

There is a newborn foal. His coat is white, the little bit of mane present is blonde, and oddly, the hooves are gold.

He is something less than a day old.

He is small. Too much so.

His eyes cannot be seen, for the sedatives have closed them. The drugs which his parents asked to be given, so that the only hours there were would pass without pain.

There is a silver field wrapped around one foreleg, with a spark just leaving the main glow. Going back to the caster, providing an update on the foal's condition, and that update will be that the foal has yet to die.

At first glance, the wings might appear red. But anything beyond that split-second, accompanied by the simplest of breaths, the only kind the foal can take, would find the truth: that the blood has soaked through the bandages again. The bone fragments were removed quickly before they could work their way into the tiny body, the stitches were placed... but the doctor had never dealt with such an arrival before. The protection given to fragile newborn wings was not there. A birth defect, one which hardly ever occurs. And without those translucent shells, those caps, the pressures of birth were brought to bear directly against the wings, and...

...the doctor -- midwife -- did what he could. But he had never seen such a birth before and, for a pegasus, would never see another. The surgery was desperate, the stitching slightly imperfect. And so the bandages are soaked again, and the stitching will be redone, and... it will be pointless. Because the foal will not live, not after the birth and surgery and partial amputations. He is too young to survive. He is too hurt to go on. He has lasted just long enough to be named, and that name is given for impermanence and fleeting beauty which nothing can save, vanished under the first touch of Sun.

The foal lives.

"Because," he softly said, "they thought it was the only one they would ever have."

His left forehoof came up, touched the cover, flipped the book closed.

She seemed to see that hoof for the first time. The color. And then she looked up, at the blond brush-cut mane, before her eyes inevitably went to all that remained of his wings. And there was so much he could have told her in that moment, that single instant where she might have been open to listening. But he had never been good with words, and so he found only three.

"Life," Snowflake said, "is hard."

She stared at him.

And then she fled from his house.

[/hr]

On the fifth day... well, there was no point in counting any more.

Snowflake sat in his tent, noting the position of brightest shine against the tent's fabric. Lunch was approaching again, but he was uncertain as to whether he should leave the market for it. Things had been unusually busy: he'd already filled up a full booking sheet and moved on through half of a second. And one of those hirings had been a surprising one, for while he had worked for Mr. Rich in the past, the business owner had never come in to personally take him on.

He was worried about that temporary employer. Mr. Rich had looked... tired.

Well, it wouldn't do any harm to stay within the canvas for a while: there was every chance that the booking rush had been limited to the morning shift, but ponies who came during lunch and found a Back After Eating sign were generally up against the same kind of notice at their own workplaces. He rotated his ears, listened for any who might be on the approach. No hooves impacting the ground outside. Just -- memory, trying to intrude on actual hearing. It had taken so much effort during the night not to believe there were still squeaking wheels desperately propelling their owner away from him --

-- the tent flaps parted.

He stared at her.

"I --" she began, and didn't seem to know how to continue from there.

"They're right here," he eventually said. His head dipped down, teeth picking up a tiny cloth bag. "I was going to drop it at your house this afternoon. You can count it if you like."

Slowly, she pushed herself the rest of the way into the tent. Her eyes regarded the bench for a moment, mostly as an alternative to looking at him. But she didn't sit down, and her head didn't reach for the bag.

"...I -- don't think I'm going to be very good at being strong," she said. "Not strong like you. Because --" and somehow, her eyes did not seek her flank "-- it's just not going to happen. I know when things aren't going to happen. I've had lots of practice."

He listened.

"But... I was thinking... we have a contract, right? And I shouldn't just back out of that. I signed it. There's probably penalty clauses and stuff."

"Penalty clauses," he carefully repeated.

Defensively, "I went to the library."

"And what are those penalty clauses?" More than a little curious as to what she'd speed-imagined into his text.

"...they're -- penalty clauses!"

Which mean she probably hadn't gotten as far as registering any definition from the library's dictionaries beyond 'this is bad.' "Scootaloo, there isn't anything --"

"-- so I can't be strong like you. But... I can shift my field now. I tried the density stuff on some really low-lying fog this morning, and... I was thinking... I still paid you for training, so maybe we could just... change the subject? And if any of it sort of winds up at flying, then... maybe I could give you a bonus."

Her head tilted back towards her own saddlebags. She rummaged. After a few seconds, two very dirty, recently-unearthed tenth-bits hit his table.

He stared at them. Then at her.

"I'm -- not very good with techniques. I told you that. Your field is probably a lot stronger than mine, Scootaloo: I can say that without trying to test you. I don't know how much I could teach you. There's only so much I can show you..."

"You could show me lightning."

Just before the visions could get started, "No."

"Why not?"

"You'd need flight first." Which was the truth.

"So we can work on that. After some lunges. Timed ones, where you show me what your times were, and before the ice cream -- lemon ice cream, you have to know that right now, before you try anything with that stupid contract..."

She trailed off. Checked the position of Sun against the canvas, and then his face.

"I mean..." she said, "there's nothing wrong with being a little stronger..."

[/hr]

It was the twenty-ninth day.

"Let me see your homework."

"I did it! Come on, what's that under the cloth? I know how you think! If it wasn't something cool, you wouldn't have hidden it! You're just trying to get me worked up and asking you what it is and -- and I'm asking you what it is. Come on! Just show me already!"

Steadily, "If you did it, then you'll let me see it."

She fumed, and finally passed the papers over. "This is the last one. You know that. All we're doing after this is reviewing for finals."

"Then instead of checking your homework, we'll be reviewing for finals."

"Snowflake!"

He ignored her, scanned the pages. "This is supposed to be a two, right?"

"Yeah!"

"Good. Then it's still wrong. Now fix it -- all right, that's fine." He got up, trotted over to the cloth, feeling her wriggling with excitement behind him, pulled the cover off --

-- and she was staring again.

The whisper was almost reverent. "What -- what is that?"

"It's the reason I can never reconcile our times," Snowflake softly said.

"I mean -- what's it called? That just looks awesome, and I bet it's got a really awesome name to match! Those curves on the board, and that little fin -- why does it have a fin? And there's no wheels? I know it's got to be something you ride, but how do you get it to move?"

"It's called a wakeboard," Snowflake gently told her. "This one's mine."

"...yours?"

He nodded.

"It's a little small..."

"I know. I ordered one in my size a few days ago, but it has to be custom-carved and I didn't want you to wait any longer. But this is what you use when you don't have ground, Scootaloo. It's what I used for a long time. I had to lunge on something, and when you go over the ripples, down the cumulus hills and start to pick up speed..." He was smiling. He knew it.

"It's -- a scooter for clouds? How does that even work? What kind of speeds do you get? It doesn't need any lubricant, and you don't need to worry about axles, or wheels wearing down, or -- anything! Can you show me?"

"Not on this one," he admitted. "But I can teach you." And he looked up.

Purple eyes followed the red gaze.

"I gathered them up before you got here," he said, nodding to the cloudscape. "And I worked on the upper surfaces. Nothing too complicated, not for your first push. But there's a few surprises. We'll see how you manage them. And then we can compare times."

She was still staring.

"I told your parents we were doing this," he added.

"You mean you left a note."

After a moment, "...yeah."

"Oh, so you still say that..."

"Yeah," he deliberately repeated. "Scootaloo, about your parents --"

"-- that's kind of high up, isn't it?" She paused in her staring for a moment, distractedly preened at itchy wings.

He nodded. He knew she was trying to distract him -- but it was a legitimate question. And he was still determined to eventually get a true answer out of her, with the current goal on that being the fiftieth day. "I wanted you to have the real experience. And we needed the altitude. Summer's just about here: it'll be hard keeping a cloud together this low for long, plus with the extra height --"

"-- what if..." And she hated the next words -- but she said them anyway. "...what if I fall?"

The extra height gave him time to accelerate.

"Don't worry," Snowflake reassured her. "I'll catch you."