The Shadowbolts tore across the night sky, their black and purple flight suits providing some camouflage as they left the small urban factory town on the outskirts of Detrot. They flew in formation with Nightshade leading, keeping an eye out for trouble ahead. Starry Skies, a slower flier than the rest, hung back with Stratus, who was hauling the crate full of Spin Juice. His strong wings made him the only pony who could carry it the whole way, but it slowed him down more than Nightshade would have liked. It made them far too vulnerable and more easily spotted. She had Charger and Blitz fly a few dozen yards out to each side to help watch for any unwanted attention. As they approached the sleepy town of Ponyville, Nightshade's nerves heightened; the town was so quiet and quaint it just had to be populated with "nice" ponies. "Nice" ponies tended to be too trusting, too curious; they could cause problems if the gang was spotted. As she always did when she became nervous on missions, Nightshade mentally ran over the dossiers of her team.

She thought each of them over carefully, noting their strengths and weaknesses as they had been presented to her and as she had learned them through experience.

First came Stratus. He started off normal enough, aside from his size. He was a pegasus on the Royal Guard who made up for his clumsy and slow flying with excellence in combat and unflagging bravery. Over the years, he fought many a monster and took down many a criminal. He also lost many a comrade. As the years ticked by, Stratus's spirit darkened. He went from charismatic and outgoing to brooding, gruff, and introverted. He also gained a propensity for unnecessary violence. He would never kill a criminal but he would come quite close to it, even in cases when it wasn't necessary. After a few of these excessive incidents, he was facing dishonorable discharge as though it was a personal goal of his. It was one he attained the week he met Nightshade. Stratus never seemed to miss his military career. If anything, he poured his passions more into being a mentor to Nightshade and training her in combat. It didn't seem to bother him that the Royal Guard dismissed him for "upholding his own personal values as opposed to their own", as he liked to put it. But Stratus, though irrefutably the most valuable member of the team to Nightshade, was also only one of four other elements of the team.

The easiest to analyze was Starry Skies. Born rich, she grew up an over-privileged pegasus in Cloudsdale. She was always a shining example of the term "Daddy's Little Princess". She always got what she wanted from her parents. Due to being spoiled from the beginning, she never really grew up, which affected her long term; she utterly lacked the ability to cope with not getting what she wanted. She had at one point tried to join the Wonderbolts. However, due to the fact that she had never had to lift a hoof in her life, she was a weak flyer. She flew at above average speeds, but she was uncoordinated and became easily frustrated with her own mistakes. After a pitiful audition she tried to fall back on her father's money once more, bribing the flight team a hefty sum of money. She was turned down, which shattered her spirits.

In the months that followed she hoarded as much of her father's money as she could and left to pursue a life of her own, dedicating herself to two things: irresponsible hedonism and seeking revenge on the Wonderbolts for crushing her dreams. As she was constantly exhausting her limited supply of money pursuing her chosen lifestyle, she began to use her beauty and sophistication to attract young wealthy stallions; in the end, she would always leave them penniless. But Starry Skies, insatiably greedy and horribly spoiled, always wanted more. Her drive to get more money led her to take up pick-pocketing and eventually, cat burglary. It was precisely this skill that got Nightshade's attention; Starry Skies was apprehended by Stratus trying to steal from the abandoned house which served as the hideout for Stratus and Nightshade.

She had snuck in an open window and crept quietly along the floor, avoiding making any noise. As it was nighttime and the house was abandoned, she didn't necessarily need to worry about disturbing anypony, but she knew from experience that unwanted noise brought unwanted attention. She had made it to the main room of the house which Stratus and Nightshade shared; by observing them for the previous week, she knew they'd be out at this hour. She quietly picked her way through their belongings, pocketing stacks of bits. This an easy job, she thought. She would have gotten away with all of Stratus and Nightshade's money had she not gotten cocky and used the front door. As she walked out, she walked right into Stratus. Had he not seen her leaving the building, she may well have never been caught; upon examining the house, Stratus found nothing out of place except the money in Starry Skies's saddlebags. By sweet talking her way out of being thrown - literally - out through a window, she earned a meeting with Nightshade. Upon learning of her skill at burglary and her seething hatred of the Wonderbolts, Nightshade readily accepted Starry Skies as her second partner.

The third pegasus to ally himself with Nightshade and her duo was Charger. By this point the gang had begun to call themselves the Shadowbolts. They quickly earned a reputation as a formidable street crew in the rough urban neighborhoods of east Clopton and began taking over underground businesses to bring in cash. Stratus would use his size and fighting prowess to muscle out weaker gang leaders, allowing the group to take over underground rings of gambling clubs, stolen goods smugglers, and street racing teams. Though they lacked the numbers to be a full street racing team, Nightshade participated i solo races. Nopony could out-fly her, and this flying prowess earned a comfortable living and the attention of one of the best street racers in Equestria: Charger.

Charger was a skilled flyer from a young age. He grew up on the streets of Manehatten, spending more time running around with the dropouts and chasing pretty mares than going to school or work. His flying prowess became his main source of income. While only a bit faster than everypony else in his class, he had the sharpest reflexes by a long shot. His particular skill was Extreme Low-Altitude street-racing; the premise was flying along at less than ten feet off the ground, dodging all of the obstacles in the street. Sometimes the track would be set up as a specific obstacle course. Other times, the participants would simply fly between buildings along a predetermined route and pray nopony stepped out in front of them. Charger excelled at both types of racing. As his reputation grew, so did his crew, and in only a few years' time he became the leader of the best illegal racing crew in Manehatten. Due to the size of his organization he turned to drug smuggling to help support his crew financially; the resulting increase in attention from the authorities drove him to leave Manehatten for Clopton. He excelled there too. As he had before, he soon gained a massive following, and with it, control over most of Clopton's underground. So of course when he heard about a young mare and her two friends taking over rackets in his city, he had to find out more.

An incorrigible womanizer, Charger was at first more impressed with the appearances of the two mares on the team than he was with their reputation. Being a colt of good instincts, he picked Starry Skies for a gold-digger the second he saw her. He turned his eyes to Nightshade, working his natural charm. But Nightshade was impervious. She already knew Charger's type, his motivations and aspirations. She explained her ultimate goal and the benefits of siding with her, and finally offered him a position on the team, knowing he would refuse at first. When he did she raised the stakes with a simple challenge.

"We race, you and me. One on one. You win, I join you. I win, you join us."

Charger couldn't say no.

The setup of the race was vastly complex, as Nightshade expected it to be. Charger was playing to his strengths. Tight quarters, sharp turns, and only two straight stretches of track. If Nightshade was to win the race, she would have to do it there. The second the race began Nightshade rocketed ahead, going through the obstacles as swiftly as she could, swerving, dodging, braking, and flaring her wings at the last second to catch a hairpin turn time and time again. Even on this short obstacle course Nightshade's wings grew tired; she was far more accustomed to flying in open air. About halfway through the course, a few turns before the first straightway, Charger blew past Nightshade as though he had flown the frustrating track every day of his life. Nightshade scrambled to the open straightway and rocketed forward, taking the lead again. However, as she turned the last few obstacles before the final straightway, Charger passed her once more, bumping her into a bale of hay. Nightshade wasted precious seconds righting herself. By the time she got to the straightway, Charger was almost halfway across. Nightshade blasted forward at breakneck speeds. Her goggles pressed hard on her eyes. As she accelerated as fast as she could, she felt herself reaching a critical point; all at once black smoke exploded around her as she overtook Charger. Blinded, Charger crashed and slid over the finish line two full seconds after Nightshade.

While he was furious that he had lost, Charger was vastly impressed that Nightshade had reached PMV on such a short straightway. He readily joined the talented pony and her team, eager to expand his business and get into all kinds of trouble with his new friends.

The final and most recent addition to the team was Blueball Blitz. Blitz was a different breed. She was smaller and lighter than the other Shadowbolts, more than likely due to the fact that she was younger than all of them; she had hardly reached adulthood when she joined. She had an unbelievable amount of raw talent as a racer, but never had the patience or discipline to participate in more than a couple of scattered street races every other week or so. She also displayed heavy signs of mental instability from a young age. She seemed to have an inability to assess or acknowledge any form of risk; while this meant that she had to be supervised almost constantly, it also helped her become a virtuoso flyer and stuntmare. Due to having no fear of death, Blitz was able to fly faster, brake later, turn sharper, and dive longer than any other pegasus would ever dare to. This lack of fear also earned her a job as a vent clearer for one of Cloudsdale's Storm Cloud factories. After the clouds were made they needed to be passed through a vent to a high-energy conductor which charged them with lightning. At times clouds would get stuck on the way through. It was Blitz's job to fly into the vent and kick the clouds through so the machinery wouldn't back up. This job paid extremely well, but was also extremely high risk. Every time Blitz went into the vent she had a chance of being pushed into the conductor by an incoming cloud. And one fateful day that was exactly what happened.

Blitz had gone in to clear a particularly large cloud, which wouldn't budge. She slammed into it with her entire body. When it broke free, she fell in after it. She turned to dart away and ran right into another cloud which pushed her into the conductor. All her coworkers could do was watch in horror as the bubbly blue pony was hit with thousands of volts of electricity, enough to kill most pegasi. After about a minute, she came out on the other end of the conveyor belt unconscious and still crackling with electricity. In only a few weeks she recovered fully, but seemed to become even less mentally stable. She began to display violent tendencies, attacking her own doctors. The day she fled medical supervision was the day the blue pony discovered the skill that would make her one of the greatest assets to the Shadowbolts.

Blitz had trampled one of her supervising doctors, and authorities were on their way to the medical facility to take her away. She couldn't comprehend why; she just wanted the doctor to go away. "If I wanted to kill him, I would have stomped on his stupid head, not his body, you dumb doctors", she muttered to herself as she lazily bound through the glass window of her room. Wiping the blood from the cuts on her face, she accelerated to escape the mental hospital as quickly as possible, making wind noises with her mouth as she flew. As Blitz tore through the sky away from the medical facility she felt the electricity surging through her. Her whole body felt as if it were vibrating. The air around her began to crackle. She accelerated even harder. Bolts of lightning began to shoot past her. The electricity in her body present since her accident seemed to agitate, and small currents of electricity jumped off of her body, joining the lighting all around her. With one final push, she reached PMV and her mind shut down. She stopped thinking and began to feel. Time slowed to a crawl. A lightning bolt floated lazily past Blitz, and a sudden urge struck her. Almost involuntarily she grabbed onto it, laying her body along it; energy surged through her, and it became all that mattered. She pulled and the lightning bolt moved with her. By guiding it she was able to make it turn with her body, making it an extension of herself. She flew this way for a few minutes, past a group of other pegasi. She couldn't help but giggle at how slowly they were flying; they looked immobile. She waved and giggled loudly as she passed them. After a while, the lightning began to flicker; Blitz felt herself tiring. She guided the lightning to the ground at an angle, flared her wings, and braked, skidding to a stop. As her senses returned to normal, she realized her ears were filled with ringing. She was breathless. Her whole body felt sore. Her hooves felt as though they were on fire. Looking back at the patch of open grass where she landed, she saw a scorched patch of earth with deep charred skid marks leading to where she stood. The realization struck her that she had literally ridden the lightning. Her luminous pink eyes widened.

"Cool!" Blitz grinned from ear to ear, her mane now buzzing with electrical charges.

"Very cool indeed", called a crisp voice from behind her. Blitz turned to see the group of ponies she had passed earlier. She couldn't help but notice the pink one, how well her flight suit fit, the way she stood. Blitz was immediately entranced by her big blue eyes. She zipped over to the pegasi and skidded to a stop in front of Starry Skies.

"Hey there," chirped Blitz. "What's your name? My name's Blueball Blitz. You can call me Blitz for short!" Still grinning, Blitz began to blush.

Before Starry Skies could respond, Nightshade stepped in between them. "You rode lightning. I've never seen a pegasus do that until now.

Blitz quickly looked back to the scorch she left on the earth, as though to make sure it was still there. "Neither have I! The doctors say I shouldn't fly like that because they say it may be a sort of mental trigger or something, but I don't really know what that means so I don't listen to them because they're boring, which is why sometimes I have to attack them so they go away and stop boring me so much so I can get out and have some fun!"

Nightshade blinked and continued. "Miss… Blitz, was it? How would you like to be a part of my team? You'd get to fly as fast as you wanted on certain missions, and on others you'd get to attack whoever you wanted. How's that sound?"

Blitz's mane stood on end and began to crackle violently. "That sounds SO AWESOME!"  She shook hooves with Nightshade, causing Nightshade's mane to stand on end too. Blitz giggled at this. And so the fifth Shadowbolt was born.

Nightshade withdrew herself from thought. It seemed they made it over the town okay. They were approaching the edge of a forest. they were totally safe once they were over it. Nothing had gone wrong.

"Hey, Nightshade!" Charger called. "We got company!"

Nightshade's stomach turned. She stopped and spun around to see a sky blue pony with a rainbow colored mane racing towards the gang.

Nightshade sighed to herself. "I really didn't wanna have to go through this tonight", she muttered. Turning to her team, she called out, "Charger! Blitz! Take care of her!"