"Let's start with that 'didn't earn my place' horseapples," Dash said. She marched over to the window and threw it open. The cool Cloudsdale breezes blew in. Mystified, Spitfire watched as Dash took the Element of Loyalty off. "Seems you don't think I earned this. Well, fine." With a casual flick of her hoof she tossed it out the window.

"Yaaagh!" Spitfire yelped. She galloped to the window and looked out, trying to spot the glimmer of falling jewelry. She was about to jump out and dive after the priceless relic blind when a hoof tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around to scream imprecations at the Princess of Loyalty.

Dash smirked. "Psych." Before Spitfire could get a word out there was a flash of octarine light around Dash's neck, and the golden necklace was right back in place.

"Wha--?"

"Li'l upgrade Twilight added," Dash said. "Can't get more than ten feet from me before it teleports back."

"Garh... you... ARGH!" Spitfire managed.

"Hey, what's the dealio? Thought you didn't think I deserved to have it." Dash shrugged in mock casualness. "I figure it would find its own way to somepony who did." Her scowl returned. "You know, like somepony who went into the Everfree forest and beat Nightmare Moon? Like I did?"

"..." Spitfire said.

"Oh, don't say anything yet. We're just getting started." Dash walked over to a display case on the wall and started pulling things down. "Maybe you don't think Nightmare Moon was enough to 'deserve' the Element of Loyalty or being a Princess or a Wonderbolt or anything else. So how about this?" She threw a framed newspaper clip at Spitfire; it bounced off her chest and fell to the floor. "How about pulling off a Sonic Rainboom when I was eight years old?" A medal followed the clipping. "Or the Filly Five Hundred at ten?" A dozen medals and ribbons followed. "How about a dozen other athletic events before I was even old enough to hold a job?"

"How about Discord, huh? Or the Changeling invasion? Or the Crystal Empire? Or the two dragon attacks on Ponyville? The buffalo war in Appleoosa? Tornado Day? How about breaking every record in Wonderbolt Academy? Or how about this one--" a winged coronet sailed across the room to strike the Wonderbolt in the chest. "How about the Best Young Flier's Competition, where I pulled off only the second Sonic Rainboom in history and saved your life?" At this point she was in Spitfire's face, yelling at the top of her lungs.

"Tell me, Captain Spitfire, did I earn the glorious privilege of working with your wonderful self?"

Spitfire sat there, looking at the trophies and mementos scattered on the floor at her hooves, speechless. "Well, Captain, let me clue you in on something," Dash continued. "In case you didn't figure it out, I never got 'given' anything. Not once. I wasn't born in some noblepony's family or in some royal palace. I spent my high school years pushing clouds to earn spare bits, then went right into doing it to pay rent when I dropped out. I spent every minute I wasn't working weather on training. Training to join your wonderful Wonderbolts. And when I wasn't doing that I was out helping my friends save the freaking world. I earned every last medal, trophy, and bit of applause I got, even if some stuck-ups thought I didn't. I even earned that diploma they awarded me today... it was a degree in weather management. Don't you dare, don't you ever dare say I didn't earn my place."

She spun around, refusing to look at the Captain. "What I can't figure out is how the hell you clowns ever got yours."

Spitfire swelled up, wings flaring. "I earned my rank by working my way up through the rank and file, like every other Wonderbolt has. The way it's supposed to be--"

"And who gave you those promotions, Howdy Doody?" Dash snapped. "You're a bunch of useless showboats! C'mon, let's look at the record here. Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis--- complete no-show. Dragon attack? Two seconds and you mighty, mighty Wonderbolts are trapped like bugs in a jar. Rarity falls out of the sky and three of you manage to get knocked out. Grade school pegasus foals know to not grab at a falling pony's flailing legs!

"You're supposed to be the biggest, best and baddest sky fighters in Equestria but you spend all your time doing air shows and pegasus derbies and posing for pictures." She huffed. "Where do you get off calling me swell-headed?"

Spitfire had gone from seething to wilting. Nothing was so devastating to the ego as the unvarnished truth. Dash didn't let up; she drove the screws home. "And then there's you personally. Tornado day, you just sat there on your plot and watched a mission critical water delivery fail. To heck with the record---you, the big bad Wonderbolt, you couldn't get off your fat duff and lend us the wingpower to get that waterspout up to Cloudsdale.

"And Wonderbolt Academy? I come to the Wonderbolt academy, and put up with all that stupid, pointless Drill Sergeant Nasty horsecrap of yours, blow the doors off every record you ever set, and you give the wingleader badge to the most reckless jerk in the squad. Who nearly gets the squad and all my friends-- you know, the Elements of Harmony-- KILLED. And you don't even know about it because you're too busy sitting in your office autographing pictures!

" The worst one though? The absolute worst, personally? I meet you at the Grand Galloping Gala, and even after all I'd done, after I'd saved the world and saved your life you barely--" her voice hitched a bit. " You barely even remember my name. And you're too busy sucking up to rich hoity toity ponies to say two words to me." Dash turned away again. "I admired you, I respected you... I wanted to be you, when I was a filly. I spent my whole life dreaming of being a Wonderbolt, working my tail and mane off for it..." Spitfire saw her rub her hock across her eyes. "And now I can't have it, but I could have something LIKE it... and you all do this to me."

It was like a barbed dagger through the heart. Spitfire looked the young princess over. She was rough and rawboned and yes, exploding with talent-- she had been even before she'd become an alicorn. And yeah, she was a showboater. But what little Spitfire had known about her just underlined what the Element around her neck said; she was loyal to the death... but if loyalty was her Element, it meant that she needed ponies to be loyal to her as much as she needed to be loyal to them.

And the ponies she admired most in the world, if the posters on the walls meant anything, hadn't even given her one day's chance. Spitfire really felt like horseapples now. She watched her new leader sitting in front of the picture window, sniffling and puddling up, and felt like absolute crap.

The silence lingered. "Your Highness, if you respect us so much," Spitfire said, "Then why do you keep doing all this stuff to us?" It wasn't an angry accusation, just a quietly stated question.

Dash looked back over her shoulder. Her cheeks were wet. "All what stuff?"

"Like using ponies as your errand colts," Spitfire said. "I mean honestly. Sending Lightning Streak in the middle of a show to feed your turtle?"

"Tortoise," Dash corrected automatically. "And what of it?" She seemed to lose her aggression. "You mean I insulted him? I... I didn't mean to. It's just-- I couldn't leave myself; Lightning wasn't performing, and I thought he liked Tank! He grew up around turtles, right?"

Spitfire suddenly recalled; she was right. Lightning Streak had grown up on a turtle farm, hadn't he.  "You still shoulda sent that little orange sidekick of yours instead--"

"Uh, no I couldn't."  Dash looked aside. "She can't quite fly yet. Raised by earth ponies." She shrugged. "Didn't you notice I was carrying her everyplace in Cloudsdale?"

"Uh, no, I... I hadn't." Spitfire blinked. "Tough break for the kid."

"She's improving. Just a late bloomer."

Spitfire waved it off. "Forget that, then. You've turned the whole show upside down, putting yourself front and center-- practically flying in the audience's faces with those low-altitude stunts..."

Dash grimaced. "I can't help that." She tapped her horn. "My range is still really bad... I can't get more than a hundred feet, tops..."

"Range? Range for what?"

"For the scan, duh," Dash rolled her eyes-- or eye, rather; one was swelled shut. "Twilight and the others can detect another alicorn from like, a mile away, but even they have to be within a hundred feet or so before it becomes directional. What?" For Spitfire's pupils had gone to pinpricks.

"Other alicorns?" the Wonderbolt Captain repeated.

There was an unearthly long pause. "Spitfire," Dash said, suddenly frighteningly calm. "What exactly did you think our big super-secret mission was?"

Spitfire felt a growing suspicion. "Tell me again...."

The explanation was long, and fairly detailed. By the time it was done, Spitfire was softly, but firmly, banging her forehead on the nearest wall. She groaned, her face in her hooves. "So that's it," she said. "Alicorns. We're looking for alicorns! You weren't just pulling air stunts, you were flying a search pattern! I feel like such a blockhead...Why didn't Celestia or Luna TELL us?"

"I thought she did!" Dash protested. "I asked you if you knew what the mission was."

"To look after you," Spitfire said. "At least that's what I thought she'd said--" She paused, fumbling for words. "Princess Celestia... might have mentioned that you'd have more details, but I assumed she meant things like schedules and rotations and--- well darn it you know how vague and obscure she can be," she finished, flustered.

"Yyyyeah," Dash said, sighing in disgust. "I could see it happening that way, yeah. She's still doing that cryptic mentor thing that drove Twilight bonkers. After a thousand years it's probably a habit..."

Dash's hoof tapped against one of the discarded medals lying about. Her grin faltered a bit as the awkwardness of the past half-hour settled back in. Spitfire saw it and tried to offer an olive branch. "For the record, Princess-- I did remember all those things you did. At the Gala. And later. I was just...playing it cool. We meet ponies all the time who've done some pretty awesome stuff. Heck, most of 'em become teammates." She sighed. "Every Wonderbolt has to go up the same ladder, one rung at a time. That's the motto, that's the attitude. You gotta pay your dues, no matter who you are." Spitfire looked abashed. "Then we looked up and you were sitting there up at the top of the ladder already. It never dawned on us that you might have got there by climbing up there yourself when we weren't looking."

Rainbow Dash managed a wry grin. "Like my dad always says. 'Some ponies, you can hit a triple and they'll swear you were born on third base.' "

Spitfire gave a half-smile. She picked up a couple of the scattered ribbons with her wingtips and offered them to the princess. "We still got a lot of rebuilding to do, don't we."

"Yeah." Dash took the ribbons and looked away.

Spitfire hesitated. "You're right about the Wonderbolts," she said suddenly. "We've... been in decline a long time. When we were founded, the air shows were supposed to be a recruiting gimmick. But we haven't seen any real combat or missions in years. Decades." She shrugged. "Till soon the shows were all that we really did. We stopped being soldiers and started being celebrities instead. Lost our edge." She winced. "We got a little too full of ourselves to do our duty properly. I'm gonna be busy convincing those flying blockheads that the Wonderbolts aren't too darn special to pull a round of guard duty."

"Hey, it ain't just guard duty, here," Dash said. " She smirked a little and struck a pose. "It's guard duty for the most awesome Princess outta Cloudsdale."

"...Princess Fluttershy." Spitfire held up her hooves defensively, grinning. "Kidding, only kidding..."

Dash snorted. "Funny. Anyway, it ain't just Guard duty. We're on a mission from Celestia to literally change the world. That's kind of awesome right there, innit?"

"The lost alicorns," Spitfire nodded. "The Panacea. Yeah, pretty awesome. Think we can do it?"

"Hey, I know we can," Dash said, holding her head up and sticking her chest out. "Princess of Loyalty and the Wonderbolts? As long as we got each other's backs, what's gonna stop us?"

"Heh. I like the attitude." Spitfire looked at the princess sidewise. "So... Pax?"

"Pax." Rainbow Dash spit on her hoof and held it out. Spitfire winced, but copied the gesture. "Hope you don't mind my saying so, Princess," Spitfire said as they shook hooves, "But you really don't wanna do that at a peace summit or anything..."

"Hah! Now I want to do it, just to see their faces." Dash grinned. She stooped and scooped up her trophies off the floor where she'd dropped them.

"So, first step is probably going to be debriefing the rest of the 'Bolts. Properly, this time." Spitfire said. She paused. "All of them. Squadmates gotta work together, and they can't do that if they don't know the other one's flight plan."

"Yeah," Rainbow Dash said, picking up the rest of her scattered trophies and stuffing them back into the display case. "And I don't... I don't want them thinking about me the way that they are right now, either."

  "I'll call an assembly in the dining hall," Spitfire said. "Get 'em all at once." The two of them started for the door. Spitfire bowed and held it open for the Princess. It was a small gesture, but it was something. "So," she asked as they walked together. She rubbed a livid bruise on her own cheek. "Um. What do we tell them about my face and your shiner?"

"The truth. We got in a fight and I kicked your plot." Dash chuckled.

"Heyyy," Spitfire whined.

"Hey, it's the truth--"

They had the Wonderbolts in the dining hall within the half hour. The explanations took a long time, and there was a lot of disbelief and a lot of back-and-forth questions. But Rainbow Dash could tell when the tide of opinion among the Wonderbolts turned in her favor. There was some reluctance and lingering resentment and a lot of shamefaced guilt, but when they heard how Dash had refused to rat out Spitfire, the spark of loyalty spread rapidly through the crowd. By the end of the debriefing, the entire Wonderbolts team was enthusiastically on board with the plan-- and with their rainbow-maned daredevil Princess.

It was halfway through that Dash realized that her nagging horn-ache was gone. It was half an hour afterward that she realized she hadn't seen or heard anything that let her know that she had their loyalty now. She'd felt it...

Next Chapter: Chapter 17 Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 39 Minutes