The Heart of Pleasure
By Haunter Rayne
Chapter 19 - The Integrity of Friendship

As Celestia began to raise the sun the next morning, Twilight groaned having not rested well from going to bed with so many worries on her mind. “Oooooh... I wish I could have at least gotten better sleep.” She sighed sorrowfully, stepping out of the bathroom from having brushed her teeth and freshened up for the day. But as she rounded the hallway into the map room she saw something that she certainly had not expected. There were two Canterlot guards patrolling the main lobby of the castle. After looking up and seeing the sun rising in the sky they nodded to one another and began leaving towards the front doors. “Huh? Hey, WAIT!” Twilight shouted at them as she rushed over.

“Oh, Princess Twilight. I hope that we didn't wake you.” One of the guards said, remembering their orders not to disturb anypony if it wasn't necessary.

Twilight shook her head but then looked to the guard feeling worried. “Not at all, I didn't even know that you two were here until I walked into the room. But what are you doing here? Is Canterlot okay? Does Princess Celestia need help?!” She asked with concern.

Now the guards looked to each other and then shook their heads. The other one spoke up saying, “It's actually the opposite. Princess Celestia sent us here to make sure that everything was alright at your castle.”

“What?!” Twilight exclaimed in surprise. "But why? She has never sent guards here before."

Now the first guard spoke again. “Late last night there were sights of a magical explosion coming from your castle. Princess Celestia was concerned and requested that two of her guard come see if there was anything we could help with. We were ordered not to disturb you if nothing seemed amiss and to return to Canterlot if no danger was discovered by morning.”

Twilight looked down a little disappointed. “Oh, I'm sorry that you had to come all this way for nothing. I don't know what that explosion was. I wasn't home at the time that it happened and I haven't had time to investigate yet. But thank you for protecting over us as we slept. Your efforts are appreciated.” Both of the guards bowed graciously to her before taking their leave and Twilight returned to her thoughts to ponder this mystery.

“What could have happened last night to produce that kind of effect? I have read and reread every book in my library. I would know about it if I had any ancient magical tomes that explode. It couldn't have been Starlight backfiring on a spell. She went out on a date and came back with a sugar coma. What could have…. SPIKE!” She scolding herself for not remembering about his little rendezvous last night and immediately ran toward his room.

Meanwhile, a different mare was just waking up elsewhere in the castle. “Eeuuhhh, still feel a bit off…. Where's… where is that medicine?” She said feeling dreary eyed, accidentally knocking several items off of her end table with her magic looking for a small vial. Eventually noticing that it was on the bed sheet right next to her she opened the top and took a deep sip. Immediately feeling better she roused herself from bed. “Ooh, phew. You need a shower girl, too much fun dreaming last night hehe.” Starlight looked into the mirror as she started to brush her hair and smiled at pictures of all her friends. “I'm gonna have to make sure those love birds are okay too before the mother hen comes cracking down on them.”

Meanwhile in Spike's room the new couple still laid coiled together. The bed that Rarity had setup was still small but accommodated them both well enough. Even though they had both shifted their positions several times throughout the night, they had remained cuddled together enjoying the feel of each other's presence in their sleep. And early that morning before either of them had risen, the door to Spike’s room slowly began to slide open. Light from the hallway illuminated the floor and was then covered by the shadow of a pony stepping forward.

A few minutes later Starlight was walking down the hallway headed to bathroom so she could get cleaned up. “Ugh, I can't believe that I found a marshmallow still in my mane. I don't even remember eating marshmallows with Rayne yesterday.” She sulked to herself sourly. But as she walked along she was stopped by a surprising sight. “Oh no!” Further on down the hall she saw Twilight standing right in the open doorway to Spike's room. “Oh come on, it's too early for this!” Quickly she rushed over to Twilight's side but slowed when she approached the door. “Twilight, please! Don't!” Starlight begged in a whisper. When Twilight seemed to ignore her she followed the princess's gaze into the room where Spike and Rarity were both still asleep. As soon as she saw them though, Starlight's heart melted not being able to believe how cute she thought they looked together.

But Twilight surprised her friend as she whispered out, “Don’t worry Starlight, I'm not going to disturb them.” The princess did not even look away when she spoke and Starlight began to wonder just how long Twilight had been standing here for. “Look at them… Look at the smiles on their faces. Look how peaceful they are together. There… there isn't anything wrong here, is there?”

Starlight just looked to her friend and placed a hoof on her shoulder. “They do look pretty cute together. You're really moved by seeing them like this, aren't you?”

Twilight started backing out of the room now and closed the door as quietly as she could. “I had yelled so much. Tell me honestly Starlight, was I horrible last night?”

The unicorn scoffed and smiled as she said, “Not at all. You were mad and you had every right to be. It was late, this was all so sudden, no pony had time to process, but you were both right. You didn't do anything wrong and neither did Rarity. We'll let them sleep in a little and then we can have a nice civil conversation about this like adults. I don't know what Rarity's morning habits are like but I know that Spike will be up soon anyways.”

Twilight sighed, “Thank you. That really makes me feel better.” The two ponies hugged happily. “It's good to have… oh um, uh Starlight?” Twilight suddenly said uneasily as she pulled back from her friend.

The unicorn looked to the alicorn in surprise but then noticed that Twilight had been sniffing. “I know! I know! I smell! I'm sorry, I was headed to the shower right now.” Starlight grumbled feeling a little annoyed but not really upset as she walked back the way she was headed and Twilight wondered off towards the map room.

- Up Above in Cloudsdale -

Ponies were rousing quickly in the sky city once the sun had been raised for the new day. Rainbow Dash and Spitfire were both woken up at the sound of another Wonderbolt entering in the dorm. They stretched and looked up from their seperate cots to see Fleetfoot walking in. She looked to them feeling a little surprised to see that it was just the two of them alone. “Oh, good morning.” The artic blue pegasus said while she glanced from Spitfire to Rainbow Dash curiously. But when Fleetfoot looked back to Spitfire again, the Wonderbolts Commander had a smirk on her face and raised her eyebrows towards Rainbow Dash. Suddenly a pillow smacked Spitfire in the face from Dash’s cot. “Hahaha don't worry. None of my buthiness.” Fleetfoot said, walking over to her own cot to get ready for the day. Now Rainbow Dash caught that look of excitement from Spitfire's eye as she listened to Fleetfoot’s lisp. Dash was the one smirking this time until Spitfire threw that same pillow right back in her face.

Less than an hour later all of the Wonderbolts were dressed and assembled out on the field. They all stood in front of the obstacle course which had now been dubbed the W.O.T.C. or the 'Walked' by Surprise and Blaze because it sounded like the acronym and it left them all ‘walking away‘ yesterday.

Spitfire stood before it proudly and she had an instructor's pointer as she prepared to break down the training session for the day. “Alright Wonderbolts, welcome back. We had a rough start on this course yesterday but we're going to keep at it until we get it right!”

“YES MA'AM!” They are shouted in perfect unison.

“You all got your first taste so I know many of you have a basic idea of what to expect already. I wanted to get a measure of your instincts to see how far each of you could get. Flash Magnus was against throwing you into the course without any instruction. But I argued that Wonderbolts need to be able to think on the fly and there wouldn't be instructions in live combat scenarios. He was worried that it would break you when you all challenged the gauntlet and failed. Well let me ask you! Wonderbolts, are you broken?!”

“NO MA'AM!” Again they all shouted and each of them grinned with pride, eager to surpass their performance from the previous day.

“That's what I want to hear! Alright, so today you ARE going to get some instruction though. This is still training after all. And don't worry Crash, there won't be any classroom portion. We don't have the time to get an entire town together to put on a montage to help you study.”

“HEY!” Rainbow Dash shouted as Spitfire and a few of the Bolts snickered. But then Dash grinned and pointed with a hoof, “Good one, hehe.”

Now that things were lightened up a bit Spitfire went back to business. “Alright it's time to get to it! Here is your official WOTC review!” They all straightened up as several faculty unicorns made their way onto the field over the stone walkways they could stand upon. Spitfire used her pointer to indicate each challenge.

“The first few challenges are simple! We have a set of long tunnels to fly through, only several of which open up at the end. There should be no excuse for any Wonderbolt to fly blindly into a dark area if they can't see where they are going! Unless you are like Blaze and High Winds who seem to ENJOY FLYING INTO DEAD ENDS WITH A LOUD BANG!” Several of the Wonderbolts laughed while Thunderlane and Soarin gave them each a playful shove. “Oh I'm not through yet!” Spitfire snapped. “You're all invited to your commander's comedy show now because today I've got jokes for each of you! After the tunnels, which the staff will be changing after each run through, are the swirling loops! This should be a cake walk for us because loops are literally what we have trained with nearly EVERYDAY SINCE FOREVER!!! Let me hear it if you want to be the 'butt' of my next joke!”

“NO MA'AM!”

“Well that's too bad because speaking of butts, I'm looking at you Thunderlane!” Now several of the others snickered as he looked surprised. “You've got some of the biggest muscle on the team and that's a good thing. But if you don't learn some grace or lose some weight I'm going to be calling you Thunderbutt for the rest of the year! I don't ever want to see you ‘stuck’ in a set of hoops again!” He nodded looking mortified, not wanting that as a nickname.

After this it was Fleetfoot who was the first to break composure for the morning. “Ha, ha, ha. Phew, hehe. Thunderbutt haha!” She laughed, being much louder than she realized.

Now Spitfire's eyes narrowed. “Thank you Flatfoot!” She called out sarcastically. Instantly the blue pegasus stopped laughing and looked ahead nervously. “It sounds like somepony likes my comedy routine!” Spitfire yelled but none of them trusted that she was sincere. “It sounds like we have a volunteer!”

“NO MA'AM!” Fleetfoot called out all by herself while the others stared just watched on with uneasy expressions.

“Oh are you sure? Because to me it sounds like you are up next!” Spitfire said mockingly and Fleetfoot gulped. “I know exactly how hard it is to be tackled by you, Flatfoot! You almost broke my hoof on your first day. So when we set up a barricade that you are supposed to knock down… I DON'T WANT YOU TO STOP TO GENTLY HUG IT!!!” Fleetfoot's name was blown back a little by the force of Spitfire's shouting. Now all of the Wonderbolts were standing up seriously and not one were laughing anymore. “Do you get me?!”

“Yeth ma’am!” Fleetfoot attempted to shout but it came out rather wimpy as she had just been reprimanded.

“We need to get it together everypony! I can't stand here and yell at you all day!” But then she paused for a minute and smiled. “No wait, that's exactly what I am going to do, hehe. BUT IT'S TIME TO GET YOU IN THE AIR! So here's your review!” Using the pointer again she started at the beginning. “Pipes! Loops! BARRICADES, Clipper and Dash! Revolving columns! Twirling rows! Spring Trap! Wind tunnel! And the Magic Slapping Paw!” Spitfire stopped there even though she was only half way through the course. “That is only as far as we are going to practice today. You WonderBITS aren't ready for the rest of the course yet until you can reliably get through these first eight challenges! Most of you didn't even get that far yesterday. I really want to see what you've learned! Now get into formation!”

“YES MA'AM!” They all cheered and started to fly off to the starting line.

“Just like yesterday, I'm going to watch your performance to help guide you on. Then half way through the day you'll have to work on your own as I will be running the gauntlet with you. Now, are you ponies ready?!”

“YES MA'AM!”

“THEN GOOOOO!!!!!!” Spitfire shouted. She watched as they all took off from the starting line and spiraled around a bit all looking for different tubes that had light at the end of them. After they were through, most of them made it passed the hoops without crashing into any of them but Spitfire sighed when Thunderlane was being overly careful of making it through each one. The barricades started to give them trouble though. The first few blocks were consistently knocked back but the strength of each pegasi seemed to dwindle as they plowed through each one. Towards the end several pegasi also had a problem with either sliding off a barricade in the wrong direction or still not tackling hard enough and getting stuck to the honey like coating that each blockade was covered in.

Even though they were scattered and disorganized Spitfire was happy to see all of them make it to the fourth challenge as a group. However that was when things really started to go wrong. “Come on!” Spitfire encouraged. “Dodge, dodge, dodge! You need to MOVE out of the way before you get hit! It's not rocket science you guys! Evade left or right for the columns and up or down for the rows!” But it was becoming very apparent that some members of the squadron were naturally attuned to dodging one way while others were skilled at dodging the other way. So no matter who it was, every pegasi was getting beat around a little in either the fourth or fifth challenge.

After each attempt there would only be three of four left in shape to face the spring trap. The pathway was covered up by a large rubber beam that required a pegasi to stop and pull as hard as they could to bend the path open. Then they had to dart through before the beam snapped shut on them, which was exactly how Blaze got her wing injured yesterday. This stage of the course seriously delayed each pegasi as there were only two beams so they could only squeeze through two at a time. “What is taking all of you so long?! You guys are better than this!”

“But this… is… heavy!!!!” Misty Fly strained at her turn to pull the trap. When she zipped through she wasn't fast enough but luckily it only caught her mane and not one of her limbs.

“You're not going to let a bad hair day stop you, are you Dizzy Fly?!” Spitfire continued to cheer. “Come on, let's move it Wonderbolts! Crash, Clipper, Flatfoot, all of you who are left! Let's go!” However for those who were able to make it this far, it seemed that Rainbow Dash and Soarin were the only two with the wingpower to make it through the wind tunnel most reliably. Some just couldn't fly hard enough while others kept getting blown in different directions which was the issue that Spitfire herself previous had.

Finally the Magic Paw challenge seemed to be where the Wonderbolts were stuck. Whenever any of them weren't taken down by something else, each pegasi always fell flat once they got this far. The Wonderbolts looked on at the giant padded paw that had a homing spell attached to it. All they had to do was fly through the hoop behind it but whenever a pegasi got close the paw would slap them out of the sky with incredible accuracy. Dash and Soarin both got slammed down two times each. Somehow High Winds had made it this far and so did Thunderlane but the result was still the same. Later in the day when Spitfire finally made it through the Wind Tunnel for her first time, she got slapped down by the paw before she got anywhere close to the hoop.

“This is ridiculous!” Rainbow Dash suddenly complained as she flew out the side of columns and skipped ahead in the obstacle course to help Spitfire who had been knocked the ground.

“Hey! Get back in formation!” Spitfire tried to scream after seeing what Dash had done. However, the actual message from Spitfire's lips ended up coming out rather slurred.

The multicolored mare just ignored her and pushed Spitfire down into a sitting position. “Sure thing, I will do just that... but only AFTER I have checked to make sure you are okay. I saw what happened from across the WOTC. The metal arm on that paw caught you right across your head. I'm not letting you up off the ground again until I've checked you for a concussion!” She said adamantly, twice having to strong arm Spitfire to force her to be still. Seeing this, each of the other Wonderbolts abandoned their progress and also came over to make sure Spitfire was okay.

Finally shoving herself free Spitfire yelled, “I'm fine!” But nopony missed that she was now walking away from Rainbow Dash instead of flying away from Rainbow Dash. “Maybe… maybe we should all take five and rest for a minute.” Spitfire slurred again before sitting. That was more than enough for them all to know she really had been hurt and was just putting on a brave face.

All of a sudden Dash yelled out angrily, making all of her other teammates jump. “WHY YOU STUPID…!!!!” Everyone watched as she sped off, skipping most of the course and heading right for the eight challenge. She charged around the paw to the right but was slapped down. Catching herself halfway from the ground she charged it again but to the left. “Aaaahhhh!!!” Once more she was slapped down. This time she recovered only just before hitting the dirt. But after her third attempt, Dash was knocked to the ground so hard that there was a loud thud from the impact. She didn't seem to be moving and several of the Wonderbolts screamed as they rushed over to her.

“Hey, hey!” “Crash!” “Are you okay?!” “Crash!” Came several voices. But when it seemed like she began to wake up Rainbow Dash’s eyes suddenly shrank to pin needles of anger.

"Get off me, get outta my way!" She roared as they tried to stop her from charging the WOTC again. "We have been working on this all day! It is already getting late and not one of us have made it passed that stupid magic paw! That thing can humiliate me all it wants to but I'm going to kick it's ass if it thinks it can get away with hurting one of my friends!"

She gave a mighty flap with her wings until suddenly a large hoof rammed right into her stomach knocking the wind out of her. “L-let me GO!” She wheezed out, falling to her knees before seeing both Soarin and Thunderhoof tackle her to the ground.

“STOP!” Soarin yelled looking down at her anger filled eyes. “Rainbow!” He called out as he held her hooves and Thunderhoof held her wings. “RAINBOW DASH! RAINBOW!” Soarin continued to yell until he saw her pupils finally focus on him and she looked confused as to why she was being held down.

“I'm sorry Dash.” Thunderhoof said with his deep voice. “I hope I didn't hurt you. But you totally lost it there for a minute.”

Dash stood up and looked to the worried faces of her other teammates. “I'm sorry everypony. That really wasn't cool of me to act like that. I saw Spitfire get hurt and I just couldn't help myself. Yeah the obstacle course is hard and even a little dangerous. But that slappy thing up there is IMPOSSIBLE! What moron designed that part of the challenge?!”

Suddenly a booming male's voice roared out across the field in the Traditional Canterlot Voice dialect. “I DID!!!!!” Looking over, all of the Wonderbolts saw Flash Magnus himself stomping toward them. Rainbow Dash suddenly turned white and then bent down to hide behind Soarin who immediately yelled at her disapprovingly.

“I'm sorry that you had to see that.” Spitfire said to Magnus as he approached. She was on her hooves now but only standing with the help of Fleetfoot supporting her.

Clearly seeming very insulted, Magnus turned to Spitfire saying, “May I have a word with you in your office please?!”

Spitfire sulked and nodded. Then she turned over her shoulder and announced, “Alright, hit the showers everypony. I might be stopping by the doc after this so you're all free to head home for the night after you all get cleaned up. I'll see you tomorrow.” And with that Fleetfoot helped carry Spitfire back to the compound while Magnus leaned in to help Spitfire on her other side.

“It seems we all got ‘Walked’ again today.” Blaze said to Surprise as Soarin had to help Rainbow Dash in much the same way.

Author's Notes:

So who liked my Walked pun? I think that WOTC and Walked sound pretty close if you try to say them out loud. It makes sense to me, I hope you readers like it.

There is more to the training course than what is shown in this chapter but I am undecided yet if I will ever specifically describe the full thing. But in later chapters these eight challenges should be enough to build the arch that I am leading up to. What do you think of the course so far? Don't worry, I think you'll like what I have in store for this.

Also I'm giving a note about the timeline here. The Wonderbolts section jumped from the morning to late afternoon in this chapter. But remember that it is still the same day as we jump back to what other ponies were up to earlier that morning.

P.S. Thank you, thank you to all of my readers who have made it this far into the story with me. I just saw that chapter 18 jumped from 12 views to 74! That means the world to me! Also please feel free to let me know if there is anything you did or didn't like in the story, or if there is anything that you want to see more of. Per a previous request you can expect there to be a lot more Applejack coming up!