Lyra's day, when she'd escaped from an oddly despondent Cheerilee, turned out well. The delivery ponies with her new cooker were waiting at her new home (a phrase she was still excited to think) and, once it was installed, her new refrigerator arrived. Things were going as planned—which seemed only minorly worrying to her.

She made sure the house was closed up and headed out to have some lunch. As she walked through town, she felt a sense of belonging. It was strange for her, given she'd only been to the growing town irregularly, but she already knew so many ponies that it just felt right. When she found myself at Sugarcube Corner, she was surprised at how popular it was.

The line moved rapidly, and all too soon Lyra found herself looking at a mare, perhaps a little older than her, that looked like she enjoyed her own cooking. "Hiya, Mrs. Cake, having a good day?"

Her face lighting up, Cup practically beamed in delight as she gestured around her shop. "Lyra! Oh, Celestia, it's good to see you again. What can I get for you?"

Looking around excitedly, Lyra couldn't help but feel she was spoiled for taste. Though there was one thing in particular that got her attention. "I think I'll take two lemon muffins, thanks. How has Pinkie been working out for you?"

"She's a darling. She baked the most amazing cake yesterday, and you wouldn't believe what she does in her spare time." Cup used some tongs to lift out two of the muffins. "She throws parties. Birthdays, anniversaries, welcome parties… You name it and she has a party for it. It's going to increase our cake output nearly double."

"Could I grab those to go?" Lyra asked.

"Of course." Cup being an old hoof at such things, slipped the two muffins into a bag and set them on the table. "There you go."

"How much?"

"Nothing, dear. You run along now."

Lyra tried using her best soldier-stare on Cup, but she just laughed it off. "Come on. You can't keep doing this." Turning around to face the next customer in line, Lyra was surprised to see Derpy smiling at her. "Oh! Hi there, Derpy. Do you know how much they charge for muffins?"

Derpy's gasp of shock worried Lyra for a moment. "You like muffins too?! Some of my friends gave me the nickname Muffins because I love them so much. Mrs. Cake charges three copper bits each for them."

"Thanks!" Lyra spun back around and looked at Cup with triumph burning inside her. She passed Cup a silver bit. "That's to pay for my two, one for Derpy, and one copper bit as thanks for being amazing!" She didn't give Cup time to do more than open her mouth before she teleported out with her muffins.

Blind teleporting was never usually safe unless you absolutely knew the place you were teleporting to was clear. The best way to do that was to teleport somewhere you'd prepared in advance, or up. Pegasi might enjoy flying, but if you kept your target just under any cloud cover, you'd be too low to hit a weather pegasus and too high to collide with anypony else.

Hanging in mid-air for a moment, Lyra started to fall when gravity noticed there was a unicorn in armor bravely challenging it.

"Hi! Are you okay?" Rainbow Dash asked Lyra.

She'd been so busy running her usual landing calculations when Rainbow distracted Lyra from her maths. "In a moment I will be. Hold on." New numbers—new distances—needed to be calculated, and Lyra barely got it right and teleported before the inevitable happened. Bouncing upwards a little ways, she waited until she was at the peak of her travel before teleporting safely to the ground.

"How'd you do that?" Rainbow hadn't been too lax either. She'd dived to catch up with Lyra and looked impressed at the fact the unicorn wasn't a pancake.

"Magic!" Lyra gestured to her horn. "But seriously, a lot of practice and maths. I talked to Commander Spitfire for you. She has good news and bad news."

"W-What's the bad news?"

"That she wants you to improve your stamina. The good news is that you have somepony she thinks can help you with it." Lyra started off walking toward the schoolhouse again.

Visibly excited at the good news, Rainbow rushed up and hovered beside Lyra as she walked. "Who's that? Is she sending one of the Wonderbolts to train me?!"

Lyra shook my head. "No, hot shot, she's assigned a member of the E.U.P. Guard to take over your training." Still wearing her armor, Lyra waited for Rainbow's to catch on. "I mean me."

"Huh? But you're not a pegasus! How can you possibly help improve my stamina?" Doing a quick loop and winding up back where she was, Rainbow scoffed. "You can't even fly!"

"I can fall in interesting ways, but you're right—I can't fly. Stamina isn't just about flying, it's about building every other part of your body up. Running is the perfect way to improve stamina." Stomping her hooves as she walked, Lyra smirked at her companion. "Running made me better at using magic, after all, I'm sure it can help with flying."

"Now I know you're lying. There's no way running could make you better at magic." In the face of Rainbow's claim, Lyra gave her the best that's exactly what I meant look she could manage, which lead to Rainbow losing her edge of confidence. "C-Can you?"

Lyra shrugged her shoulders, causing her armor to make a few odd clinking sounds in the process. "Mostly? No. But some of the same discipline carries over, and there are exercises you can do while running that help with some aspects of magic training. But that's beside the point, Commander Spitfire said you need to build stamina by running, and I think that'd be a good idea for you to do."

About to counter again, Rainbow looked thoughtful for a moment. Lyra could almost see the gears ticking over as Rainbow ran the conversation through her head again. "So Commander Spitfire, leader of the Wonderbolts, sent you to train me to be ready to join the Wonderbolts?" Her ego was reinflating by the second. Rainbow snorted. "I always knew they wanted me to join."

"Glad you're so enthusiastic. I'll see you at 6 A.M. tomorrow, and every day." When Rainbow fell to the ground and froze in place, Lyra couldn't help but grin and keep walking. "Don't worry, I'll let you know what time at night will be good for our evening runs. There's another way, of course."

Rainbow jumped back into the air and rushed up to Lyra's side again. "Another way than getting up before anypony else in Equestria? What is it?"

"Well, you could go to Canterlot and join the E.U.P. Guard. You'll have two weeks of running several times a day—with a pack and armor on—and then some more months of specialized training, but you could join the Wonderbolts that way."

"I…" Turning her head, Rainbow looked off to the edge of town. "I can't do that."

Not putting the facts together, mostly because she didn't know the mare who lived in the direction Rainbow looked, Lyra just shrugged. "Well, I'll see you in the middle of town at 6 tomorrow morning."

Freezing again, Rainbow seemed to remember to keep pumping her wings. She just stared at Lyra for a moment. "Oh Celestia no… You're a morning pony, aren't you?!"

"Not really, but you know what happens when you keep getting up really early? You get used to it."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Scootaloo almost jumped when she was walking out of class with her friends and Lyra was standing in the hallway. "Uh, hi?"

"In all the rush today, I totally forgot to make you a lunch. Here's something I picked up, I hope you like muffins." Floating the remaining muffin out of her saddlebag, Lyra passed it to a surprised Scootaloo, then she turned and started walking for the front door.

Staring at the muffin, Scootaloo lifted her head at the sound of the door opening and rushed forward. "Wait!"

Scootaloo's hug caught Lyra by surprise. She lacked a wing to hug the filly back with, but instead put her foreleg around her and gave a little squeeze.

"Thanks for—for all of this." The hug made Scootaloo feel good. She wanted to hug Lyra more, but her friends (and lunch) were waiting. "I'll see you tonight!"

Looking back at the filly who was now galloping down the hall to her friends, Lyra couldn't help a little chuckle. "Now I need to find somewhere to do some shopping." She turned for the door a second time and trotted into the midday sun.

The day progressed—as they do—and Lyra found Rich's Barnyard Bargains. After buying a good amount of groceries and some cookwear, she retreated back to her new home to put the groceries away.

The amount of little jobs around the house were myriad, but Lyra took to them one at a time with regimented precision. A mental bell went off in her head and she turned to look at the kitchen. Their first big meal together in the house—Lyra wanted to do something special.

And she did.

"I'm home!" Scootaloo opened the front door and walked inside. The floor was spotlessly clean, which surprised her. "You've been cleaning?"

Poking her head around the doorway to the kitchen, Lyra grinned a little wider at the look of surprise Scootaloo wore. "Of course. I'll be bringing some stuff from Canterlot tomorrow, and didn't want it getting dusty. I hope you're hungry."

That's when Scootaloo's nose started twitching and her eyes widened. "I-I know you said you can cook, but I kinda just—What's that smell?" There were hints of familiarity to the scents wafting from the kitchen. Scootaloo dropped her schoolbag and started following her olfactory sense to the source.

"Well, since there seems to be a lot of stuff that's kinda the same between where I came from and what I know of your dad's culture, I figured I'd try some Australian staples. I wasn't sure if you liked meat at all, so I skipped the barbecue shrimp." It had surprised Lyra to see shrimp at the market, and she'd almost purchased some but figured she should ask first.

Lyra used her magic to lift two plates from the barely-warm oven and carried them to the old table in the kitchen. "Eggplant parmigiana, with some mashed potato and green beans. We used to have a more… meat-oriented version of this back home, but it was really popular."

"When you say meat, I get the feeling you don't mean more shrimp." Scootaloo jumped up on a seat and stared at the meal before her. A shiver ran all the way from her nose to her tail and back up into her head.

Using just her hooves, Lyra picked up a knife and fork and got to work on the meal. "Yeah. Where I came from, we were… omnivores." When Lyra saw confusion on Scootaloo's face, she realized she'd need to go into details. "We ate meat and plant stuff. In about equal measure."

Looking a little more warily at her plate, Scootaloo used her fork to poke at the schnitzel.

"That's eggplant. Don't worry, I haven't eaten like that in years—since before I became a pony." Proving her point, Lyra cut into her own parmigiana and speared it onto her fork. "See?"

"Is it strange then that I feel more comfortable with you than if another pony had come here and done this?" Following suit, Scootaloo started into her own meal. The first bite into the rich Napoli sauce swamped out her earlier worries with flavor. Her second mouthful followed quickly on the first, then the third…

A tight little knot of tension in Lyra unwound at the sight of Scootaloo eating. It was like a milestone and millstone both. She took another bite of her own meal before answering. "Sometimes it takes the eyes of an outsider to see a problem. I don't know if that was Princess Celestia's plan for letting us move here, but I'll bet if I ask her she'll just smile at me as if it was."

Gulping down a mouthful of potato, Scootaloo shook her head. "It's still unbelievable that you know Princess Celestia."

"I only know her as a teacher and mentor. If you really want somepony who knows her, you'd be better off talking to Mum. She's spent more time with the princess than anypony else I know except for her guards."

"And you know all them!" Scootaloo giggled at that. "Hold on. She was your teacher? You said something about that before, but I didn't think she was really your teacher."

"Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. When she first invited me to attend, I wasn't even a unicorn—or a pony." The addition of caramelized onion to the mashed potato, Lyra mused, had been a good idea. "That's why I said we'll go to Thestralia and let fate decide if you should be a bat pony. It's been—and I can say this completely honestly—good to me. I turned up in Equestria as a unicorn, with Princess Celestia's invitation, and there was just no question about if I should attend."

Scootaloo drank up the information. It reminded her of good days with her parents and exploring new places. A stray thought picked up on Lyra's mention of Thestralia, and she reminded herself that she'd be going there soon. "School term lasts another five weeks." Though it seemed like forever. "Then we have a four-week break."

"That'll be perfect. Hopefully Sweetie's back by then, and we can arrange her some time off to come with us."

"W-What's she like?"

"Sweetie Drops? You're going to get a bunch of biased opinions from me—I married her after all—but I think you'll like her." There wasn't much left on Lyra's plate. She used her fork to scoop up some remnants of potato and use them like putty to catch stray beans.

Scootaloo was a little slower than Lyra at eating—it was a big meal—but she was doing her best to savor what had been a surprisingly memory-stirring dish. "I hope so."

"Ready for dessert?" Lyra asked.

"Wait, there's dessert too? What did you make?" Staring at Lyra, Scootaloo felt like she was being buttered up for something.

"I don't know if you'll have heard of them. We call them lamingtons." Not bothering to get up, Lyra used her magic to float the plate of chocolate and coconut covered cakes to the table. "I hope you don't mind, I used plum jam and whipped cream for the filling."

When the plate got close enough, Scootaloo froze. "W-What do I do with it?"

"You can hold them in your hoof. Eat it like you would a cupcake." Demonstrating, Lyra floated one lamington to herself and held it with her hoof before taking a bite.

Following Lyra's example, Scootaloo lifted one of the cakes from the plate and held it up to her mouth. The smell of chocolate and coconut was strongest, but she could definitely get hints of something sweeter inside it. Taking a bite, her eyes dilated as the flavor combination hit her palate. "Mmm!"

"Yeah. I figured with the predisposition ponies have for cakes and sweets, lamingtons would be a hit. Have you had them before?"

Scootaloo didn't want to stop eating the delicious dessert, so she just shook her head. "Mff-ffff"

"Well, I might have to give Pinkie Pie the recipe to them. I don't think she had them back on Earth, so it's probably an idea to take her one and the recipe." Clamming up, Lyra decided to just take the time to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

Only when two lamingtons each were consumed did Lyra start the conversation again. "I'll bring as much of our stuff down tomorrow. Did you want to come for a run before bed?"

"A run?" Only after asking did Scootaloo realize that Lyra was literally that crazy about running. It fully dawned on her that though she might not be working nights anymore, she was going to be doing work. "Sure."

The run went well, to Lyra's way of looking at it. Scootaloo ran beside her for the first lap (though it was only Lyra's fast-trot), and then rode her scooter for the next three. Lyra welcomed the extra work of pulling her ward around. After a shower each, they both lacked any ability to resist sleep once they lay down in their respective beds.

Over a week, life settled down and became normal for Scootaloo. She'd been surprised at how much stuff Lyra and Sweetie had, but the addition of furniture to the rest of the house made it feel like a home again.

Though it wasn't her parents' home anymore.

Scootaloo's parents never had electric guitars, armor racks, and the constant smell of baking, but it was completely impossible for Scootaloo to claim any of those things were bad.

What surprised her, when she rode her scooter home after school (just before the weekend started), was the confused-looking mare standing beside the front door of her house. She dismounted her scooter and walked up to the door. "Hello. Can I help you with something?"

Relieved at finding somepony to help her, Sweetie Drops tried her best smile on for the filly. "Hiya. I'm trying to find Lyra Heartstrings. She said this should be the right house in her letter, but I don't want to barge in on…" She trailed off when she realized Scootaloo had frozen in shock. "Um, are you alright?"

"You're Sweetie Drops, aren't you?" Scootaloo's voice shook a little as she asked the question. Her life had been entering a stable period after far too long without one—it was a little scary for her to consider things might go pear-shaped again.

"Scootaloo, I take it?" Sweetie Drops looked at the filly critically for a moment. It wasn't immediately obvious to her why Lyra would have taken Scootaloo in—but she'd read enough to know that Scootaloo's looks were deceiving. "I'm Sweetie Drops, I'm pleased to meet you."

Staring for a moment, Scootaloo blinked as her mind started working again. "Guess I should have guessed from the armor." She lifted up her hoof and clopped it against the one offered by Sweetie. "I have a friend with the same first name."

"I don't mind if you use my whole name to keep things compartmentalized." Turning back to the house she was standing before, Sweetie let out her breath slowly. Lyra's letter had been full of all kinds of talk as to what she'd done with the kitchen, but being a somewhat gifted cook herself, she wanted to see it.

"What's compart—That word?"

"It means keeping things straight and in the right places. Storing your thoughts in boxes so you can get to the right one when you need it."

Scootaloo stepped past Sweetie and opened the front door. "Huh. I guess that works. Come in."

"Thank you." So far, Sweetie liked Scootaloo. Asking when she didn't know a word instead of just assuming it was something else boosted her opinion. "Wow, all our stuff!" Looking around the living room, Sweetie turned in place to take in the placement of all their things.

Immediately gravitating toward two new things, Sweetie turned back to look at Scootaloo. "Are these yours?"

The sound of quiet (but not silent) hooves alerted Sweetie to an unseen assailant approaching her. Lack of metal on wood sounds indicated a lack of armor, but there was a telltale addendum to each step that told her the pony coming had learned to run. She turned just in time to get tackled by Lyra.

Sweetie's heavy armor made hugging her a little more difficult than usual, but Lyra was not a mare to be dissuaded from welcoming her wife home. "I missed you, Bon Bon."

Freezing at the show of affection, Scootaloo started to turn and walk away. It was obvious that this was the right mare—Lyra's wife—but she just didn't know her well enough yet to consider her part of the strange little family she'd found herself in.

Spotting Scootaloo walking out, Sweetie paused her reunion with Lyra and made sure her wife knew where her attention lay.

"Hey, Scoots, I want you to meet a very special pony," Lyra said. She'd picked up on Sweetie's silent message easily enough.

Stopping her retreat, Scootaloo turned. "We, uh, met outside. Hi again."

"I was asking her about some new additions to the house. What are these?" Sweetie looking to Scootaloo for the answer, and when Lyra tried to provide one, Sweetie silenced her with a boop to her nose.

Given that the new instruments were one of her favorite subjects over the last week, Scootaloo felt buoyed up with excitement to have somepony new to explain everything to. "They're didgeridoos. You play them like an instrument by blowing into them a lot. Tufts made them for us."

"Is it like some kind of flute?" Sweetie asked.

"Excuse me," Lyra said, "but I have dinner to finish."

Scootaloo barely noticed Lyra leave the room. She walked over and grabbed up her didgeridoo and made her way back to the couch with it. "It's different than a flute. There's no wavy bit in it to make a high-pitched noise, so you use your tongue, lips, and cheeks to make the sound. Like this."

Over the week, Scootaloo had practiced each night. She wasn't able to keep a tune going for long, but she was getting much better at breath control. Lining the instrument up with her mouth, she held it with her forehooves and leaned back on the couch.

Though she couldn't get as low as Lyra could with her didgeridoo—mostly because of the size and resonant notes—Scootaloo still got a good depth of tone as she played. Wanting to put on the best show she could, she struggled and strained to keep her breathing cyclic, but she couldn't keep going for too long and eventually had to stop.

Shivering at the haunting notes, Sweetie Drops clopped her hooves together when Scootaloo stopped. "That was quite something. You said Tufts made it for you?"

"He did! But we helped—me and Lyra that is. We did it in a Dream, and he turned us both into bat ponies while we were there. It took me a while to find the right tree, but that made it more special." Scootaloo was more than happy to talk at length on one of the strangest and most amazing turning points of her life. The instrument in her grip only inspiring her to continue into explaining the whole week following the Dream.

By the time Lyra called on Sweetie and Scootaloo, she found the pair talking about boats of all things. "Dinner's ready. I hope you're both hungry. I made roast vegetables and shire puddings." She noticed Sweetie's eyes widen a little and giggled softly to herself for remembering the meal they worked together to produce most often in Sweetie's mother's kitchen.

"I've never had that before. What's it like?" Scootaloo asked.

"Why don't we got to the kitchen and find out?" Sweetie still hadn't seen the kitchen, and was itching with excitement to not just have a good, home-cooked meal again, but to explore what Lyra had done with the place.

Following Scootaloo, Sweetie froze in the doorway and looked around the kitchen. There was a modern and professional-looking stove installed as well as an old wood-burning one at the far end of the room. A refrigerator that looked big enough to climb into dominated one end of the counter, while that modern stove was at the other. Everything looked gleaming and new—even the old stove that seemed to have been polished up to within an inch of its long life. "Wow."

"Is that a good wow?" Scootaloo asked, already climbing up to her seat at the table.

"Yeah, that's the good wow. It's normally followed by a hug wow." Lyra was correct in her estimation of Sweetie's mood. She squeezed her wife back tightly. "We need to go have dinner, Bon Bon."

Sweetie paused and looked back at herself. "Much as I'd love to take my armor off, I've been running in it all day. If I take it off now, you'd disown me." She took her spot at the table and sat down.

Floating the plates over to the table, Lyra set one before each of them. She didn't wait on any signal, nor did any of the others.

The meal was everything Sweetie had hoped she would get upon returning from her latest mission. Scootaloo was still a bit of a conundrum for her, but she had already found herself liking the filly just from the time they'd spent talking about her recent history. "The mission was… not as we'd have hoped."

"Mission?" Scootaloo asked.

Biting her lip, Sweetie had a moment to think if telling the filly would be a good idea before she remembered that Scootaloo was part of their life now regardless. "Yeah. Lyra told you what I do?"

"Monster Hunters, right?"

Sweetie nodded. "Each year the bugbear get stirred up by their—their desire to expand their territory. Most years this is just infighting between each clan, but we'd gotten a tip-off that it was different. He was a big sort, about twice the size of the other bugbear, and he was riling them all up to cross the inlet to Trottingham. It would have worked, too. They'd ripped down countless trees upriver and sent them down in clumps.

"They'd just finished making a bridge of sorts when we arrived. We literally got off our boat, galloped from one side of Trottingham to the other, and watched the bugbears loping across the logs toward us." Digging back into her meal, Sweetie left Lyra and Scootaloo hanging on her words for a minute or two while she enjoyed more of her dinner. "Everypony got their game on. Half the squad was in light armor—the pegasi and our unicorn—so those of us in heavy gear charged out onto the logs to meet them.

"I'd never seen Sargent Broad Strokes really fight like that before. She held her ground and our line against the charging bugbears. I took one of her flanks and, as a squad, we kept them back. That's when Corporal Giggles started using her signature spell."

The turn of the conversation to magic had Lyra almost literally spellbound. She hadn't met with many of the Guard's other spell-slingers, and in particular she hadn't had time to investigate specific spells of any. "What was it?"

"She turned the logs into balloons. You should have seen it. No sooner did a bugbear put their weight on a log than their claws would pop it. That nasty one, though, he got all the way up to us and tried to blindside the sergeant. If I'd been wearing my light armor, I wouldn't have been able to put as much force into my kick, but as it was I sent him flying across the gap of balloon logs and back to where he'd come from."

Scootaloo's eyes were wide as saucers. This wasn't a tall tale that her friends might tell to amuse themselves—Sweetie Drops was a real soldier and this was real fighting. She barely remembered to eat her food as she listened to the story.

"So all done with now, right?" Lyra asked.

"We hope so. The griffons still have to deal with the bugbears on occasion, but that's a much more one-sided fight. Griffons are kinda lazy, but if you get one angry you have to remember that, for the most part, both their parts are predators and they can fly. We have some scouts keeping an eye on the bugbears. They report both to the Guard and the griffons. You'd be surprised at how territorial the griffons get." Sweetie pushed the last of her shire pudding around her plate to mop up the gravy.

Lyra followed suit, cleaning up her own plate. "You don't sound convinced this is over."

"There was a moment, Lyra, when he looked at me after I'd just bucked him over the gap in the logs, and it was the kind of look that says, 'I'll be seeing you again soon.'" Sweetie put the last of the pudding in her mouth and savored the taste of it. "This is really good."

Scootaloo stared at Sweetie, then at Lyra. "But, what about the bugbear? Aren't you worried that it'll come after you?"

"If it does, it does. The Guard will stand with me and we'll deal with it. I'll cook breakfast tomorrow, okay?" Mopping up the last of her meal, Sweetie savored the food to the very last bite.

Lyra stood up and collected the plates from the table with her magic. "I hope you're both ready for your run."

"Sure am." Sweetie stood, causing her armor to clank a little. "You haven't been slacking off your exercise I hope, Lyra?"

"Pfft. As if. I've been resistance training, you know. C'mon and let me show you what I did with one of the downstairs rooms." Lyra led the way from the kitchen to the room she'd called The Armory. "Here. With all our stuff, we didn't have a hope of filling this whole house, so I figured one room just for our military gear would be fine."

"There's four armor stands in here, Lyra."

"Well, I figured better to have an extra one. You never know when we might have company, or I might need to get some heavier armor. Speaking of which, I'd better load up." Walking to her own armor stand, Lyra started transplanting her armor to her body. "Hey, Scoots, wanna help me out?"

After a week of helping Lyra put her armor on twice a day for their runs, Scootaloo considered herself an expert in it. As Lyra twisted and turned, Scootaloo grabbed the right straps and pulled them tight until Lyra could fasten the buckles. "This strap here looks a little messed up."

Walking over to inspect the strap, Sweetie nodded. "Well spotted. You'll need to take that to get an armorer to fix it, Lyra." She hadn't realized it, but Sweetie had slipped back into her military voice easily.

"Sir! Yes, sir!" Lyra said, her tone and pose showing off her experience in the military, though her salute was sloppy.

Sweetie just groaned and kissed Lyra on the cheek. "I missed you."

"Well, of course you did. You need to aim better next time." Prancing past her wife, Lyra left the room with a big grin on her snout.

Scootaloo, now far more used to Lyra's sense of humor, couldn't stop giggling at the silly reaction. She walked out—grabbing her scooter—before Sweetie and followed Lyra to the front door. "Oh! We have another pony who runs with us."

Lyra opened the front door to reveal Rainbow Dash outside doing stretches. "Hi, Rainbow, this is my wife, Sweetie Drops. Sweetie, this is Rainbow Dash."

Rainbow's eyes widened at the earth pony in heavy armor who walked out of Lyra and Scootaloo's house. Earth ponies had more than just a little extra size over pegasi and unicorns, they had a greater sense of you aren't going to move me unless I want to-ness to them, and seeing one in the heaviest armor Rainbow had ever seen only made her seem more-so. "Uh, hi!"

"Rainbow's trying to get into shape to join the Wonderbolts. Commander Spitfire herself said that she should start with running," Lyra said.

Rolling her eyes, Rainbow stretched her wings a out. "I thought it was totally stupid, but you know, it feels good to be able to run more now. Been getting a bit tired during the day, though. Guess if I can't sleep in and can't have an early night, the sleep has got to come from somewhere."

"Before we started," Scootaloo said, "Rainbow didn't even know there was a six o'clock in the morning."

Even Rainbow Dash had to snort a laugh at the gag. "Yeah, yeah. Come on, let's get this started." The first lap would be a trot—a warm up. What Rainbow was most curious about was how much running Sweetie would be able to manage in heavy armor.

Stepping forward easily into a trot, Lyra picked up Scootaloo's scooter and set it on her back. When Scootaloo broke into her own gallop, Lyra smiled. On her other side, Sweetie caught up with a trot and Rainbow took up a position on the opposite side of Sweetie. "We start off like this to give Scootaloo a good run. When her legs get longer, though, we're going to have her lengthening her stride more with us."

In just a week Scootaloo had learned the joy of running. In her whole life up until meeting Lyra, she'd not really just run before, but having stretched her legs and moved with the rhythm of her body, she was hooked. She ignored the chatter of the adults around her, mostly talking about Ponyville itself—she was in her zone.

"Scoots? You want to go another lap or get on your scooter?" Lyra asked.

"B-Bit more!" She managed almost another half lap around Ponyville before Lyra set the scooter down before her. With a jump, Scootaloo landed on her scooter and she took hold of the golden handle Lyra made for her. "Ready!"

As Lyra broke into a full gallop, so do Sweetie. She felt good about running beside Lyra again, the simple act of moving together a delight that never failed to sate some desire inside her.

Scootaloo didn't just ride along passively behind her, Lyra knew. The filly was constantly doing stunts and moves that tugged backwards on the magical tether more or less depending on what she was doing. Lyra wouldn't begrudge her for it—far from it. The extra pull on her magic (and thus herself) at random made her focus all the more on keeping her pace and stride constant.

The run, however, eventually came to an end. Lyra slowed them all down to a trot again for the last half a lap, then brought everypony to a stop back at her front door.

Rainbow just stared at Sweetie for a moment before she shook her head. "How can you run with all that on?"

"Practice and training. Think about it, if I couldn't run with armor on, how would I be able to fight with armor on?" Sweetie Drops offered up some of the same words she'd been given when joining the Guard. She could tell, however, that both herself and her armor were going to need some cleaning.

"We'll see you tomorrow?" Lyra asked Rainbow.

Giving the same groan she gave every night, Rainbow Dash nodded. "Yeah. This'll kill me."

"You'll get used to it." Lyra used her magic to open the door for Sweetie. "Trust me. Eventually it will be normal, and then you won't be able to handle waking up later."

"That's what I'm worried about." Rainbow had a grin on her face as she said it, however, and spread her wings. "I'll see you in the morning."

"She already knows everypony in town." Scootaloo trotted into the house, intent on reaching the upstairs bathroom as soon as possible. Two runs every day had taught her an appreciation for having two showers each day.

"Do you now?" Sweetie made her way toward The Armory. "Any cute mares?"

The question would be thought of as a trap by many, though Lyra tapped her chin in contemplation. "Well, Scootaloo's teacher is pretty hot."

"Is she now?"

"Yeah. Totally cute in that young teacher kind of way. Oh! But this mare I saw today…" Lyra let out a trailing sigh. "Thighs that wouldn't quit, stacked muscle for days, and the cutest little snout that makes me want to spend the rest of my life kissing her."

Sweetie accepted a kiss on her nose with as much grace as she could muster. "Let's get out of this armor and have a shower."

The idea seemed like the best Lyra had ever heard.

Cheerilee: Have you tried dating services

"I'm at the point of actively looking, not desperate and dateless. Though, if you know any cute mares or even stallions, I..." Cheerilee blew out a sigh. "Just give me their name. Ponyville is a surprisingly large town—I'm sure there's somepony here for me."

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
A.P.O.N.I.
Canary in the Coal Mine
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