Twilight Sparkle was cleaning up the remnants of her latest adventure when she heard the noise. She was downstairs, sweeping away the pieces of glass and magical residue that came with the wacky, R-rated escapades she always seemed to be getting herself into these days. The last one had taken an uncomfortably long time; it felt like it had gone on over and over and over and over and over... Twilight shook her head and tried to focus on her sweeping. She was probably misremembering anyway. A pony being stuck in a 'time loop' was a ridiculous concept to begin with. Her brain was obviously just in need of a hard reset of some kind.
The noise was so loud it almost shook her off her hooves. It started like a bang, then turned into a fwoosh, and finally a blam, with a rattle so loud every one of her carefully replaced beakers threatened to vibrate off their shelves and shatter on the ground again. But they didn't, because that would be just plain rude.
"What on earth was that?" Twilight asked the question to nopony in particular, partly because she always enjoyed hearing the sound of her own voice. It made a delightful aid for exposition, in a pinch.
The sound seemed to have come from upstairs. Twilight dashed out of her basement to meet it, leaving the last pieces of her grimdark journey sitting in the dustpan.
There was a hole in the side of her house. Her tree. Whatever it was. That was probably where the noise had come from. It seemed likely, anyway.
"Oh my gosh!" Twilight stepped over a few planks of carefully layered debris, watching for protruding nails or Spike's body. "What happened?" Again, she asked the question to nopony in particular.
This time, however, somepony was around to answer her.
"Sorry about that, Twilight."
Rainbow Dash stood at the top of the heap of shattered lumber, accidentally on purpose striking a picturesque pose. Her wicked-cool mane flowed behind her like a superhero cape, and as she stood, one hoof slightly raised, a truly epic song began to play in the background.
Behind her, an embarrassed looking Pinkie Pie poked her head out of the remains of the tree-house wall.
"Yeah... we're le sorry about that, le Twilight."
What?
Twilight stuck a hoof in her ear and wiggled it around. She'd gotten the meaning from Pinkie's sentence, but bits of it seemed to be off—like she was speaking with a strange accent. Twilight blinked a few times before looking over the damage to her library, then up at Dash, who was staring off into the distance, which was technically just Twilight's kitchen.
"You broke the entire side of my house!"
Dash turned her sterling gaze towards Twilight and rolled her eyes.
"I said I was sorry already, yeesh. What more do you want?"
"Yeah, le Twilight. Le give us le break, huh?"
There it was again. It was like a strange form of the pig-latin that foals took to using, pretending their parents weren't quick enough to work out their barely coded speech. Like that, but... stupider.
"Pinkie, are you okay? You've got a... weird accent or something."
Pinkie rolled her eyes too. She and Dash shared a glance and a chuckle.
"Uh, duh, Twilight," Pinkie said, pulling herself fully out of the collapsed pile of wood. "It's le how everypony is le talking le now. Get with le times!"
Twilight blinked.
Something was very off.
"You still didn't tell me how you managed to break my house open," Twilight said, stepping up the pile of rubble towards Dash and Pinkie as she spoke.
"Yeah, about that..." Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her head with her hoof and grinned. "I guess I was winning a little too epically for my own good."
Twilight blinked again.
"What?"
"I thought something like this might happen today... I had five epic wins before breakfast, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before an epic fail came along."
"Don't worry, le Rainbow Dash!" Pinkie chimed in. She grabbed Dash from behind and nuzzled up to her mane. "You've still got le whole day for as much le epic win as you can le manage!"
"What on earth are you two talking about?"
Dash and Pinkie rolled their eyes in tandem.
"Come on, Twilight. I've been epically winning my whole life. I guess if you were paying attention, it might come as a bit of a surprise, but this is just who I am."
"Le yeah!" Pinkie said, standing behind Dash with her arms crossed. An oversized gold clock had somehow appeared on a giant sparkling chain over her neck in the course of a few seconds.
Slowly, Twilight craned her neck and scanned around the remnants of her treehouse's main room, searching every nook and cranny with her eyes as though a surprise party of ponies might suddenly spring forth and reveal she had been on camera the whole time. But there was nothing in the corners aside from the dusty splinters of her house's broken siding.
"Did you both contract brain cancer in the last twenty-four hours?" Twilight asked.
"No, but you sound like you've got fail cancer," Rainbow Dash countered with a sneer.
Pinkie Pie fell to tearful laughter behind her, tumbling around in the lumber underhoof.
Now it was Twilight's turn to roll her eyes.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work right now anyway?”
Rainbow Dash made a face that looked like she’d eaten an epic-fail sandwich.
“Work? Why would I do any work? That’s totally not epic.”
“You have a job with the weather team, don’t you?”
Dash brushed a strand of her mane back. The sunlight pouring in through Twilight’s tree-hole caught it as it flipped, and shone sexily all over the house.
“Nah. I decided that job wasn’t epic enough. Not nearly enough wins.”
Twilight rolled her eyes again.
"Whatever. Are you going to fix my house?"
"Yeah yeah, we'll get around to it. It might be time to give your house a bit of a redesign..."
"An epic redesign?" Pinkie piped up, pulling herself to an upright position again.
Rainbow Dash turned to her with her eyes wide. "Pinkie, I think you just read my mind." Dash pulled her hoof back and nodded to Pinkie. "Brohoof?"
"Aww yeah!"
In sequence, the two of them readied their forelegs, held them in place, then threw them forward. The books on the still standing shelves bristled with the force of their movement. The walls shivered. The boards underneath rattled.
Their hooves connected with a medium-volume smack. Rainbow Dash grinned broadly. "Epic," she said.
"Truly..." Pinkie began, then paused. Her pause lingered, hanging in the air like the verdict of a thousand years war. Everypony in the universe hung on edge, though they may not have known it, as the next words of her sentence brewed on her lips. In a far-off galaxy, a race of sentient rocks tuned their universal scanner to 'Pinkie frequency' and craned their non-existent ears to hear her announcement. Further still, worlds were born and ended as they waited. The whole of existence crumbled and was rebuilt a hundred times, a thousand times, endless aeons upon aeons filtering through the sieve of causality and temporal meaning until all that had been, would be, and was, merged into a singular whole, made and unmaking itself as Pinkie's pause hung, hung, ever unfinished in the air. On her lips. Which moved. She spoke.
"...le epic," she said, almost a whisper.
Twilight shoved Pinkie roughly on the forehead, sending her tumbling back over the shattered wall.
"I don't know what's wrong with you two, but I want my wall fixed before the day's over. Understood?"
Pinkie nodded from her landing place on the ground. Dash rolled her eyes, but straightened her expression as Twilight gave her a glare.
"Sure," she said.
Twilight nodded, though she kept her angry glower. She waited a few seconds before hopping down the tower of wood and making her way back downstairs.
"Talk about your epic fails," Rainbow Dash said under her breath.
"You le said it!"
Twilight emerged from her basement after a few hours of pacing and angry muttering. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie were bad enough together most of the time, but today they seemed to have transcended their usual 'annoying' into 'quantum stupidity'. Still—as long as they undid their 'epic win', Twilight figured she could make peace with the situation. They'd get tired of their new schtick eventually.
It was midday, which meant it was time for lunch. Twilight braced herself for the structural damage she knew must be waiting for her still as she walked up from the stairs—but, to her great surprise, the wall looked to be properly mended. Her books had even been put back onto their tiny bookcase below the stairs.
As Twilight gave the wall a once-over to make sure it wasn't just a sheet of paper held in place by masking tape, the two voices she'd spent the last few hours trying to drive out of her head drifted towards her from the kitchen.
"...it was totally crazy! I thought I was gonna get sick, but there were so many different ones to try, I had to suck on them all at least once. I totally finished them after a while."
That was Dash's voice, which meant Pinkie Pie couldn't be far away—
"Wow, le Dashie! That's amazing! I usually can't le take more than four before my le stomach gets le epically sick."
Twilight's mouth curled down as the particulars of the conversation began to settle in her brain.
"Nah, you've just gotta work up to it, like me. Takes a few years of epically doing it, but after a while, it's not too bad. I've gotta tell you though, my face was super sticky. I kinda wanna go have one right now, let that big thing slide right past my marelips—"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Twilight burst into the kitchen with a shout, throwing her forelegs about like a wacky tube-pony advertising a carriage sale.
Dash and Pinkie stared at her from opposite ends of the kitchen.
"What's up, le Twilight?" Pinkie asked.
"Stop! I don't want to hear about that!" Twilight waved her hooves at Pinkie, the universal sign for 'quiet', usually reserved for loud ponies in the library.
"Hear about what?" Rainbow Dash un-leaned from the wall and looked towards Twilight with a raised eyebrow. "I was just talking about—"
"I heard, I heard. You were talking about your..." Twilight shuddered. "...your ‘marelips’. What a horrible word."
"What? I'm a mare, and they're my lips." Dash pointed to her mouth and opened it wide a few times. "What's the big deal with using that word?"
Twilight stared blankly in Rainbow Dash's direction.
"You mean... you were talking about... your actual lips?"
"Le duh!" Pinkie hopped up from the wall she was leaning against as well, and took up a spot by Rainbow Dash's side. "What le else would we have been le talking about?"
"But... you said... sticky..."
"Popsicles. It's super hot lately. We were just talking about how many popsicles we've been eating."
The air in the kitchen cooled uncomfortably as Twilight looked back and forth between Pinkie and Dash. Her chest deflated. "Oh," she said.
"I could actually go for a popsicle about now, actually," Rainbow Dash said, walking towards the kitchen doorway. "Do you think I could get Big Macintosh to get me one after we're done banging?"
"If he le won't, I bet one of the other five le stallions you invited le will."
"Yeah, either that or the group after them. Hard to find time for popsicles with all this bangin’, I guess."
"Aaaaaaaaaaah!"
Twilight ran out of the room before the conversation could continue, abandoning Dash and Pinkie with her stomach still grumbling.
Dash and Pinkie shared a smirk.
"Le epic sexual comedy face," Pinkie said, grinning. Dash grinned back.
"Come on," Dash said. "All this talk about banging has made me feel like surrounding myself with as many unfamiliar ponies as possible, if you know what I mean."
"You mean your le epic fan club?" Pinkie said, bouncing alongside Dash as she walked outside.
"Exactly." Dash grinned.
Pinkie shut the door to Twilight's house with a bright smile.
"Epic," she said. Dash nodded in agreement.
Everypony in the entire universe was gathered around Dash as she stood at the front of her fan club meeting room. They were leaning forward, hanging on her every word. Many of the younger ponies in the back were drawing questionable art or writing illicit fanfiction about her as fast as they could manage.
"So I was in town the other day, not doing anything particularly exciting," Rainbow Dash said, pacing leisurely in front of her fans.
Behind her, Pinkie Pie was scribbling furiously on a large sheet of paper. She stuck her tongue out between her teeth as she drew, finishing her work after less than a minute of the crowd waiting with bated breath for Dash's next sentence.
"When I ran into a fan. A pony just like you guys."
There was a collective gasp from the crowd. Pinkie's crayons scratched against the paper for a few seconds longer, until she held up her next sheet.
"So I stopped for a bit, and said hi. It was just some kid, but that's the kind of epic pony I am: nopony's too lame for me to epically win around."
Several fillies in the front row swooned, caught in the furious proximity of Dash's epically winning aura.
Scritch scritch scritch.
"The kid obviously had a question for me. I let her collect herself for a bit so she could ask me. When she could breathe again, she was all: "Oh my gosh Rainbow Dash, you're so much win! I think you're the best, but I wanna be the win too!""
"I was like, "No way, kid. Maybe when you're older." And she was all, "Dang.""
Everypony's eyes were on Dash. Most of them were sparkling brilliantly, drinking in every word from the pegasus' mouth like it was a tasty, melted popsicle.
"So then she said, "Hey, Rainbow Dash? I've heard you're the most epic win there is... is that true?" And I was all, "Duh!""
""Could you do an epic win for me now? A really epic one?" she said. And I was like, "Buck yeah I can!""
"So then..."
Rainbow Dash jumped into the air and spun around its perimeter enough times to turn the entire earth into energy with the force of her kinetics. Several ponies burst into spontaneous wingasms, while others frothed at the mouth from an overload of too much win.
"I did. And it was... epic."
Everypony clapped. The noise was deafening.
One of the many fillies in the crowd leaned towards her friend and whisper-yelled into her ear above the noise of the crowd’s roar.
“Rainbow Dash is so epic!”
Her friend nodded emphatically.
“I know! She has so many epic wins... it’s like the whole universe was made just for her!”
“Yeah!”
“Hey, we should rename the universe after her, and all her epic wins!”
“You’re right! But what should we call it? Something about how she’s always winning all the time. Hmmm...”
The filly thought for a moment with her hoof on her chin. Her eyes lit up with the flash of an idea after a few seconds.
“Oh, I know! We’ll call it... the Epic-Awesome-Rainbow-Dash-Is-Cool-And-Doesn’t-Fail-Verse!”
“Sweet!”
Both of them peeked their heads up as high as they could and shouted towards the front of the clubhouse.
“You rule, Rainbow Dash!”
Rainbow Dash smiled and bowed in the air.
"So," Dash said, landing and beginning a slow walk across her makeshift stage, "does anypony have any epic business to bring up before I close the meeting?"
From the far side of the club-house, the door burst open.
"Rainbow Dash!"
Twilight ran through the epic crowd of ponies with her foreleg outstretched, her eyes wide, and her free hoof clinging a book to her side. The crowd reluctantly parted to let her past, though most of them glared at her imposition on their observation of Rainbow Dash. Dash, and Pinkie behind her, tilted their heads quizzically at Twilight as she ran forward.
"Dash," Twilight said, panting as she stopped. "I need to talk to you. It's urgent." Twilight held her waving hoof to her chest and wheezed as she attempted to collect her breath.
"What's up, Twilight? Did you come to see me for some lessons on how to epically win?" Dash leaned back on an ethereal table, lowering her eyes winningly at Twilight. The crowd 'oooh'd. "Or," Dash said, her eyes becoming even more seductive, "did you come to see me about some much needed bangin'?"
The crowd became a collection of hysterical hoots and hollers. An old stallion's pacemaker gave out. In the recording studio in Canterlot which was following Rainbow Dash's life and antics, seven studio producers imploded. The seating in the studio collapsed, crushing a family of fifty underneath. None were spared.
"Zimbabwe!" Pinkie yelled from the back of the stage.
For a reason she couldn't place, Twilight tasted vomit in the back of her throat. She ignored it and did her best to continue. "No," she said, holding her book up. "It's not that. Ever since you left, I've been researching your weird new... whatever it is. You too, Pinkie."
"Le?"
"And," Twilight continued, "I've discovered something awful. Look." Twilight held out her book with a page open to the middle and pointed to it sternly.
Dash took a second to puzzle out the words, but then remembered she was too epic to be illiterate any more.
"'Winnitis'?" she read, squinting towards Twilight.
Twilight snapped the book shut and nodded.
"That's right. It's an... 'epic' disease that targets the immune systems of ponies with too much 'win'. I'm worried it's going to happen to you!" Twilight lowered the book to her chest and stared at Dash, her eyes wide and sparkling with tears. "Please... you need to stop all this winning."
"Pssh, as if!" Dash jumped into the air and began doing backstrokes with her wings. "Everypony knows I'm too epic to ever stop winning. Even losers who can't stand normal ponies think I'm the best thing ever. Isn't that right, T-dawg?"
A strange, hairless ape stood up from the front of the crowd and walked to Dash's side. His face dripped with pasta-sauce, and a giant beard reached from the bottom of his chin all the way down his neck, chest, and presumably his stomach, though it was covered by a bright pink t-shirt further down. Dash hung in the air next to him. Twilight wanted to back away, but her legs refused to move. The strange, pink monkey was too terrifying to run from.
"I do NOT like ponies," the monkey said, enunciating his syllables with an autistic emphasis, "and I want OUTTA EQUESTRIA!!!" He turned to Rainbow Dash, reveling in the volume of his three exclamation marks. "But," he said, running a hand through Dash's mane, "my little Dashie has to come with me."
Dash brushed off the monkey's hand and pushed him back into the crowd, where he landed with a wide berth.
"As if," Dash scoffed. "You're still in line behind that Greek guy."
Twilight waited until the strange creature had picked himself up and sulked to the back of the crowd before she attempted to move her legs again.
"But Dash, I don't think you understand. You're in serious danger. If your Winnitis reaches critical stage... you might die." Twilight paused. "...epically," she added somberly.
With a fwoosh, Pinkie popped up behind Twilight's head. She had a strange outfit on, red and black, and it clung tightly to her body as she leaned towards Twilight, leaving little to the imagination of the crowd behind. Several of them no doubt began to think of popsicles.
"Captain," Pinkie said, holding a strange, hoof-sized device towards Twilight. "I'm getting le strange readings from this le creature. I'm not sure but... I think I might be detecting large quantities of... le butthurt."
"Excuse me?" Twilight spun around, subconsciously pointing her butt as far away from the crowd as she could manage. As she glowered, Rainbow Dash floated down next to Pinkie and looked at Twilight with a grave expression.
"I think you might be right, ensign." Dash took the device and looked over it. From where Twilight stood, she could see a picture of a cat taped to the matte black finish. "The readings are unmistakable. This pony is... flank-flustered. Saddle-sore, even."
"I am not—what does that even mean?" Twilight smoldered towards the two ponies in front of her, both of them leaning together with their faces locked in dire frowns.
"Yes, it's le true then... her jimmies are definitely le rustled," Pinkie said, running her hoof over the cat picture.
"Her jim-bobs may be reaching critical mass, is what you're saying?" Dash asked.
Pinkie nodded.
"No doubt about it. Anymore le time left to herself and her le jammies will be rumbled irreversibly."
"No!" Dash held a hoof to her forehead dramatically. A few feet away, Twilight's stare threatened to burn a hole through the air.
"But wait... le captain!" Pinkie gasped and held the black thing in her hand aloft. Dash spun to her immediately.
"What is it, ensign?"
"Le captain, my captain," Pinkie said, gesturing to the air with her device. "Off the starboard bow... I'm detecting... no, it le has to be... large amounts of le epic win!"
"Great Scott! That might be enough to counteract the mad-rays being emitted from this pony!" Dash gestured pointedly to Twilight, whose frown could have ruined ten foals' birthdays at once.
"They've over le here... no, wait, le here!"
"Don't worry, ensign. I know how to handle those wins."
Dash leapt into the air and began to paddle through it like a swimming pool. After a few seconds, a noise like a high-pitched bell underwater rang throughout the clubhouse. Above Dash's head, the word 'WIN' appeared in bright green letters for a second before vanishing away.
"Woo! Go Dash!" Pinkie cheered and jumped onto her hind legs. The crowd followed suit, clapping as Dash circled and collected win after win.
In the middle of her cheering, Pinkie felt a set of hooves grab her around the waist and pull her backwards.
"Pinkie!" Twilight said. "This is serious! You and Rainbow Dash need to stop epically winning—now!"
With a final ding, Rainbow Dash froze in the air and lowered herself back to the ground.
"As if." She ran a hoof through her mane, dislodging a single prismatic hair and tossing it into the crowd. A small-scale riot broke out in the assembled masses, and within seconds ponies were punching each others' teeth out for the prize drifting among them. "In fact," Dash said, stepping over the seething bodies, "I think I'm gonna attempt my most epic win yet. Just for you, Twilight."
"But—"
"Be there or be fail!" Dash yelled as she jumped into the air. "#SWAG!" With a burst of brilliant rainbow-coloured light, she was gone, leaving a Rainbow Dash shaped hole in the clubhouse wall.
Pinkie tapped Twilight on the shoulder, and Twilight swiveled her head around to find herself face to face with a crude sketch on a piece of white paper.
"Look Twilight, it's le picture of le you!"
Twilight glared, mute.
"See you later, le Twilight!" Pinkie said as she hopped towards the Dash-hole, bouncing cheerfully as she followed the still-lingering rainbow trail in the air.
This left Twilight relatively alone in the clubhouse, with only the writhing bodies of Dash's fans beside her. She stood next to their awful brawling, her face sinking as the sick worry of what exactly she should do about Dash weighed on her chest, as well as the question of how exactly she was meant to pronounce a '#' in normal conversation.
The stage was set. The giant diving board was largely unnecessary for a pony who could fly the same height in an instant, but theatrics were important. Rainbow Dash stood atop the board, flight-goggles strapped securely to her face. She stared forward into the sun, smiling. The sun blinked before she did. Epic.
From the bottom of the board's ladder, Pinkie Pie waved a painted sign with a single word emblazoned on it. No guesses.
Through the crowd that had gathered around the ladder, Twilight pushed her way with several glares in her direction. Eventually, she made her way to Pinkie Pie, who was staring upward at Dash's firmly toned butt. "Woo!" she yelled.
"Pinkie," Twilight said through the noise of the crowd, "please tell me Rainbow Dash isn't going to do anything stupid."
Pinkie held her sign still and turned to Twilight, smiling as wide as she ever had. "Don't le worry, Twilight," she (le) said. "Dashie's going to le win le most epically she ever has... le!"
Twilight grabbed Pinkie by the shoulders and shook her, prompting a waterfall of glitter to pour out of the back of Pinkie's mane.
"Pinkie," she said. "Listen to me. This is serious. Rainbow Dash might die if she wins any more."
"She's gonna do ten-thousand Sonic Rainbooms at le once!" Pinkie said, her smile returning. "That's over nine-thousand!"
"I know how to count, Pinkie."
Twilight sighed and let go of Pinkie, who immediately returned to her sign waving.
Overhead, Dash crouched low on her diving board. The sky was a deep, pegasus-cerulean, and Dash couldn't wait to tear it apart. She licked her marelips in anticipation.
"Hope you guys are ready for the most epic win ever," she said to herself in a whisper.
Somehow, the crowd knew. They cheered loud.
Twilight bit her lip, hoping against hope that for once, Dash could prevent herself from winning.
Time slowed as Dash's hoof left the board. It wobbled at her, almost like molasses, as she sprang up. The air around her body sizzled. In the city of Canterlot, far away, Princess Celestia became inexplicably pregnant.
The Rainboom started. Then started again. All ten thousand at once.
"Woohoo! She's le doing it!" Pinkie yelled, her eyes locked on the epicenter of Dash's win.
One-by-one, the Rainbooms began to separate from their coalescence. Ten-thousand rainbow ripples surged outwards as Dash began to move through them.
But she stopped as the beams began to pour outward.
"Dashie?" Pinkie held her sign still. Her smile faded into a worried frown.
Rainbow Dash was falling.
"Oh no!" Twilight stood on her hind legs and craned for a sight of Dash as she plummeted. "She's falling!" she cried.
Nopony else seemed to notice besides Pinkie. The cheering went on.
"It's her win(g)s! They must have le given out!" Pinkie said. She hopped over the heads of the crowd and began sprinting in Rainbow Dash's direction. But she wouldn't be fast enough.
Dash was falling. Her eyes were shut. Her win(g)s fluttered uselessly on her back as her body plummeted.
"So this is it then, huh?" she said to herself. The air whistled as it zoomed by her head, the ground growing closer all the while. "I guess it's true what they say," she mused as the crowd came up to meet her. "That sometimes, if you win too hard... you end up failing."
She shut her eyes.
"Epically."
She waited for the smoosh of what were soon to become pony-shaped pancakes beneath her. But none came.
A soft glow lit against her fur, followed by the touch of a familiar hoof on her back. She opened her eyes.
"Twilight?"
Twilight nodded. She smiled as she lowered herself and Dash safely to the ground, away from the throng of thrashing ponies that threatened to wash over them like an angry river.
"But... how did you..."
"I can still do that teleporting thing, y'know," Twilight said with a smirk as her hooves touched ground.
Dash stared at her, open-mouthed. "Epic," she said, followed by a loud, hacking cough.
"Easy now. You just relax. No epic winning for now. Just rest, okay?"
Dash nodded. She closed her eyes again, and the black behind them welcomed her to unconsciousness. A high-pitched voice in the background faded as sleep took over, screaming quieter and quieter each time: "Le! Le! Le! Le... Le... Le......"
With a shaky hoof, Rainbow Dash raised her spoon of oatmeal to her marelips. She took in the mouthful of brown slush before setting the spoon back down in its bowl. After a few seconds of chewing, she swallowed and smiled meekly.
"How's your oatmeal, Rainbow Dash?" Twilight asked from across the table, nursing her own oatmeal. Pinkie Pie sat between her and Dash, nose buried in her bowl of glop.
"It tastes pretty e—I mean, it tastes... good."
Twilight nodded and smiled.
"I'm glad."
"Le tasty face." Pinkie Pie grinned obliquely, oatmeal dripping from her mouth.
The clang the pot made as it went over her head was almost deafening. Pinkie held her hooves to the vibrating metal in an attempt to quell its ring, but the effect had already begun, and the shuddering of her body sent her below the table with a defeated slump.
"Pinkie," Twilight said, "it's important for Rainbow Dash that you be considerate of her condition. No 'le's, okay?"
After a few seconds, Pinkie emerged from the underside of the table, pot held in her hooves. Her mouth was curved into a frown.
"Okay," she said dejectedly, putting the pot back on the table. As she set it down, her face lit suddenly with a hidden fury.
"Actually," she said, her voice rising, "it's not okay—"
Clang
The pot sent Pinkie under the table even faster this time. Twilight giggled.
"Thanks a ton for looking out for me, Twilight," Rainbow Dash said, turning from her oatmeal with a soft smile. "It's totally... cool of you."
"No problem, Rainbow Dash." Twilight returned the smile and set her hoof on Dash's, squeezing it gently.
"I feel like I owe you for being such an... awesome friend."
Twilight shook her head.
"You don't owe me anything, Rainbow Dash. But—" Twilight pulled out a quill and a scroll of paper from under the table where Pinkie was still recovering from her pot overdose "—I think it might be nice if you wrote a letter to Princess Celestia."
"LEtter," Pinkie mumbled from her haze of near unconsciousness. Twilight kicked her smartly in the face, and she sank into the floor once more.
"Sure thing," Dash said with a grin.
"Dear Princess Celestia," she read aloud as she wrote. "Doing well in life is hard for some ponies. There are a lot of challenges, and not everyone has what it takes to deal with them."
Twilight leaned back in her chair, her hoof still on Dash's as she listened to the pen scratching on paper.
"Sometimes, it's easy to get caught up in thinking too hard about those challenges... how we want to overcome them, or do better every time, for ourselves, or for somepony else. Fighting against hard stuff and winning is important... but it's not everything.
"The most important thing to remember is that 'winning' or 'failing' doesn't make a difference in the end—because, if you have ponies who care about you, no 'fail' will ever be enough to throw you off your game. They'll always be there to catch you. And in the end, that's more important than any 'win'... no matter how big it is."
Twilight beamed at Dash as she set down her pen. Dash beamed back at her. She held her smile as Twilight wrapped her forelegs around and pulled her into a close, full-body hug, squeezing her like a giant teddy-bear. Dash returned the hug and giggled into Twilight's shoulder.
"Now that's what I call an epic win," Twilight whispered into Dash's ear.
Under Twilight's hooves, Dash's body jerked. She coughed a spray of blood onto Twilight's shoulder and heaved backwards, falling from her Twilight's grasp, toppling from her chair and onto the floor. Her body shook with a few spasms before settling, stone-still.
Twilight was barely up from the table before she saw Dash's eyes. Their normal energetic lustre was gone, replaced by two giant 'X's. She was dead. Terminal Winnitis.
Twilight held her hoof to her mouth as the tears began to leak from her eyes. "Dash..." she said softly.
"What an awful finaLE," Pinkie said from under the table.
THE END
