Chess Sweats

Chapters

Diametrically Opposed Foes
Detention Breakdown
Returns
Stress Test
Ambush

Diametrically Opposed Foes

Twilight Sparkle had countless terrible days in her seventeen long years of painstaking life.

She could recall every single one of them, too; this was a trait her therapist referred to as ‘startlingly neurotic’ and apparently a contributor to her chronic stress, or whatever. Twilight thought it just meant her episodic recall was flawless.

What did therapists even know?

Psh. Social sciences.

The day had begun tamely enough in AP chemistry.

Possessing a notoriously weak poker face, Kasparov embodies the board as if they are one and the same. His expressions as clear as the black and white tiles, and his moves mirror his intention with an earnestness that could be misconstrued as naivety by someone with foolish notions about to be proven disastrously wrong.

Twilight’s eyes gave the blackboard at the front of the classroom another cursory glance, as they were prone to at least once every few minutes to ensure she wasn’t missing anything.

Hah. That would certainly be novel; Twilight had already covered the entirety of this year’s chemistry syllabus in her pre-term reading and went over it again twice in her pre-pre-term reading. She was the student that kept pop quizzes up at night.

Though of course, she wasn’t so arrogant as to insist she could flawlessly recite just about every piece of information any science teacher could present to her regardless of context, but - come on. You’d have to be pretty ignorant of the academic standing of your peers to assume she wasn’t, at the very least, a standout amongst this particular lot.

There was them, and then there was her. If being called a nerdy freak meant being the best, then so be it.

Despite the cynicism towards her classmates, Twilight was still an ardent pledge to the typical poindexter’s tradition of respecting your teacher, so she still vowed to pay attention to the lesson. Even fleetingly during her sneaky book-reading.

Just because the class was full of philistines who dealt more weight to frivolities like smartphone-based entertainment and vaping and- and…social engagements, didn’t mean that the time Ms Cheerilee spent drawing up atoms and formulas shouldn’t be honored.

Twilight looked back down at her book, shielded from Ms Cheerilee’s eyeline by a carefully constructed barricade consisting of a pencil case, a water bottle, and the power plugs protruding from the desk to which bunsen burners would soon be connected for the class practical.

One could wonder if Veselin Topalov observed Garry Kasparov's expressions on that fateful day in 1999 as intricately as the board, trying to foresee his thoughts through the twitches in his brow, and if he had known the terrifying threat his opponent posed when blessed with the ivory army.

Twilight droned out the chatter around her, wishing for the hundredth time that day and quite possibly the trillionth time for her entire academic career that she had true selective hearing to make the task more effective.

Her current reading was way more important than anything going on today, anyway.

College applications required academic portfolios containing a certain level of diversity that Twilight’s rigid schedule…scarcely allowed.

She’d always been confident that filling even her leisure activities with further study would make her a prime candidate for any university, but as her former babysitter and current guidance counselor Cadence had regretfully informed her, colleges these days apparently favored at least some non-academic hobbies or whatever ridiculous phrasing it was.

‘Did things for fun’ was the exact wording Cadence has used to describe the stupid idea.

They wanted hobbies and clubs and extracurriculars uninvolved in actual school stuff, to show a well-rounded character.

Psh.

What wasn’t well-rounded about being the best in every subject? What wasn’t well-rounded about taking on extra independent study in her free time?

She was so well-rounded, in fact, that slanted surfaces made her nervous!

…Very well. She would play their game.

Cadence, though aware of how silly such a suggestion would seem to someone like Twilight after their decade of knowing each other, thought that a sport or some form of art would look best on the application, and maybe even teach something about teamwork or creativity.

But most creative pursuits made her feel juvenile. That’s the itch that reading fiction was supposed to scratch.

And sports were…sweaty. And typically involved spherical objects that could be lobbed at her head by disgruntled opponents and teammates alike.

So arrives the optimal choice!

Chess technically counted as a sport, and games were played one-on-one with an opponent. Move orders could be memorized, and there were so many grandmaster games to pick strategy from. The best players were notorious for logging dozens of their moves from memory prior to even white’s very first move.

It was perfect!

Though Canterlot High didn’t have their own chess team, serendipitously, its sister school Crystal Prep did. As such, the qualifying round for the chess team intended to compete in the national high school tournament was open to students from either school.

Twilight had never played chess before, but after a week of furiously scouring every book on the subject she could get her mitts on, she was confident her extensive opening knowledge and rounds against herself on a practice board would secure her a place.

This book aims to elucidate that monumental game from opportune e4 to crushing resignation on Qa7, when Kasparov undoubtedly became one of the most prevalent modern masters of Chess that future generations would study for strategy as intently as-

“Watch it, Pinkie!”

Suddenly, Twilight was pulled from the delightful trance of reading by a shove against her side, causing her lab stool to rattle to the side. She gripped the table to keep herself upright, then shot a spiteful glare at the offender to her left.

She’d been enjoying an empty table for the past half hour of the lesson, but it appeared that, much to her chagrin, her two table mates were merely late, not mercifully absent.

Great.

Pinka-frickin’-mena Pie and Rainbow ‘competes-professionally-at-asshattery’ Dash. The two shrillest loudmouths in the entire school, nay, the entire district.

Cheerilee cleared her throat. “Miss Pie and Miss Dash. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised to see you two being late. I hope that at least some of your tardiness was spent on coming up with a good excuse.”

Twilight heard Pinkie shoot a quick ‘she can’t call us that word’ to her friend, causing Dash to snort.

“Well?” Cheerilee raised an eyebrow.

“We were with Vice Principal Luna,” Dash quickly said, still smirking, reaching into her pocket to provide a folded up piece of paper. “She wrote you a note.”

Cheerilee strode over, her expression portraying clear doubt in the validity of the girls’ excuse, and took the note. She analyzed it for a few seconds, before letting out a small huff.

“...Very well. Rest assured I will be double-checking after class to verify with the vice principal. And I think you owe someone an apology for crashing into them, Rainbow?”

Pinkie and Dash exchanged glances and snickered, making Twilight’s eye twitch in annoyance at the audacity.

Dash shot Twilight a raised eyebrow, then looked back at Miss Cheerilee, mumbling something incoherent that sounded nothing like sorry.

Whatever, not like Twilight wanted anything from the likes of her.

She’d stashed her book beneath an open textbook in one practiced, clandestine motion when Miss Cheerilee had come closer, and was already itching to get back to it. She habitually sat up straighter when the teacher had approached her desk and didn’t relax until she started to retreat back to the front of the classroom. She’d seemingly done so in a noticeable manner, because from the corner of her eye, she saw Dash point a thumb at her and share a laugh with Pinkie Pie.

Asshat.

She slid the book back from its cove, but before she could get back to it, she felt a tap on her shoulder.

Irritated, she turned, only to be met with freakishly wide Gatorade-colored eyes.

“Hey, Twiiiiiilight! Twilight-Twilight—Twilight! Can you be the highlight of daylight?”

Twilight cringed, then went back to her book, hoping that ignoring the neon pink issue would make it go away.

Unfortunately undeterred, the issue kept talking. “Since we missed the first bit of the lesson, mind if me ‘n Dashie borrow your notes?”

“Girls!” Cheerilee snapped from the front. “I assume that the vice principal's note doesn’t extend to chit-chat, so if you’d stop distracting other students who actually want to learn something, I’d appreciate that greatly.”

Twilight couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of smug validation at Pinkie finally clamping her mouth shut, but that joy was incredibly short lived, because she felt another tap against her shoulder.

“I’m not giving you my notes,” Twilight finally whispered back, glaring at the late-comers. “So if you’d quit bothering me, that’d be great.”

Pinkie visibly shrank back.

“If you’re gonna ask anything of egghead-prime you should make sure she gets that stick out of her ass first, Pinks.”

Twilight whipped back around. “Excuse me?” she hissed.

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “Oh wow, are you actually talking to me? Little Miss AP Prissy? What’s the occasion?”

Twilight appraised her.

Truly, Dash wasn’t worth her time.

Shorter than her by about an inch, but surely at least ten times more intrusive. For some unknown, ungodly reason, they shared far too many classes.

This was nothing if not an enigma; Rainbow Dash was a stereotype of the brainless jock if there ever was one. Maybe those balls she liked to kick about in fields like a baby animal frolicking in a kids book managed to bonk her on the head one too many times and she got lost on the way to remedial classes, or a clerical error had haplessly placed her in Twilight’s path.

Who knows.

In the end, it didn’t matter, because she was annoying and terrible and mean all the same, regardless of how exactly she’d managed to trample her massive eyesore leather boots into Twilight’s schedule.

She never even tried in classes, never even pretended to listen. She bunked off, goofed off, and pissed off every teacher in every class, so what even was the point of her?

Actually, scratch the previous analogy with the baby animals. Rainbow Dash was a big ugly wolf, always snarling and hissing and making crude jokes. Just about the only people she was tolerant to were the teammates in her various silly sports clubs and the posse of colorful characters she’d somehow must have blindsighted to her ghastly personality.

Messy streaked hair, cuffed jean shorts, fishnet socks, rumpled leather bomber jacket… was there any part of her that was tidy?

“Just leave her, Dashie, we’ll just get the textbook,” Pinkie mercifully tried, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

Twilight looked at Dash, expecting to see her firing up for another retort, but her line of sight was fixed on the closed cover of the book in front of her. Dash then glanced up at Twilight for a moment, almost thoughtfully, before scoffing. “...Whatever.”

Poor thing, the idea of reading is probably giving her a Vietnam war-level flashback, Twilight thought meanly.

Everything had finally seemed to start to calm down ever since the two latecomers arrived, but their whispering had apparently drawn Cheerilee’s attention once more, because she started to approach the three’s desk with a far-too purposeful stride.

Twilight looked up, once more starting to tuck her chess book beneath the textbook cover.

Cheerilee frowned down at their table.

“Is there a reason you three are the only ones yet to start preparing for the practical?”

Twilight looked around and cursed at herself. Sure enough, she’d missed the scrape of chair legs on linoleum signaling her classmates began preparation for the practical. Stupid Dash! Stupid Pinkie!

She was…she was in trouble?

Gosh, this had never happened before.

“Well?”

“I…uhm…”

“She was just helping us catch up, Miss Cheerilee,” a voice chimed in.

Twilight was aghast to see it belonged to Pinkie.

Cheerilee raised an eyebrow, then glanced at the open textbook in front of Twilight. Thankfully, it was turned to the relevant page on calorimetry. Her concentration may have betrayed her, but foresight did not!

The teacher sighed. “Very well. That’s kind of you, Twilight. I’d expect nothing less of you.”

She smiled at Twilight, then, which was a far more expected expression. Teachers loved Twilight.

That was one of the Rules of Normality.

“If you’re done getting up to speed, start to set up your bunsen burners. We’ve already gone over the steps of the practical, but I’m sure Twilight will explain those effectively.”

She said something else about safety rules and the typical lecture on practical protocol, before striding back away to her desk.

Twilight let out a tense breath, then glared at her deskmate.

“I don’t need you to cover for me.”

“Hey, she was doing you a favor. You could at least say thanks,” Dash said, lip curling.

Dash narrowed her eyes as Pinkie Pie grasped the textbook, quickly scanning over it before starting to set up their bunsen burner.

Twilight ignored both of them, instead opting to snatch the bunsen burner from Pinkie and plugging it into the gas tap pointedly.

“Let’s just get on with the stupid practical.”

Headache already forming, Twilight strode to the front of the room to collect the food samples for the test, shrinking slightly when Cheerilee’s eyes fell upon her, cheeks burning.

She slinked back to her table, only to see that Dash and Pinkie were apparently engaged in some childish magic trick demonstration.

“I was gone for literally two minutes! What are you-”

“Is this your card?” Pinkie said mysteriously, producing a king out of seemingly nowhere.

Dash frowned. “When did I pick a card? When did we start playing this game?”

“See? That’s how good I am. I picked the card so hard you forgot you even picked it.”

“Gaslighting isn’t a magic trick, Pinkamena.”

“Gaslighting? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do to the bunsen burner?”

“Urgh! Will you stop mucking about?” Twilight hissed. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then scowled. Whatever. Whatever! She’d just do this herself. “Don’t touch anything! I’ll just- I’ll let you copy my notes at the end. You two just sit there and try not to screw anything up.”

Dash shrugged. “Works for me.”

Twilight exhaled, then returned to working on the results table. Standard stuff, she’d done this thousands of times before.

The two girls at her side returned to their weird game, graduating to a two-player version that Dash wasn’t completely baffled by.

Twilight briefly felt like a tired babysitter occupying a pair of toddlers with some electronic device, but shook the visual off as she worked through the first two food samples to burn.

This was where everything went wrong.

In retrospect, the toddler analogy was rather fitting.

You’re not supposed to leave toddlers alone in just about any context, which is why Twilight could only blame herself for what happened next.

She’d forgotten the fifth food sample when she’d blanched from Cheerilee’s scrutinizing gaze earlier, and had left the bunsen burner lit at the table with Pinkie and Dash.

With her back to the table, she could practically feel time start to slow with the dawning horror that reared its ugly head as the sound of a confetti popper going off rang out like an angel’s dying cry.

She spun around just in time to see thousands of multi-coloured particles falling into the bunsen burner, before hellfire erupted.

It would have been beautiful, really, had it not been for the screaming and blaring fire alarm as bits of rainbow sparkles sizzled like demonic rain falling from Satan’s maw.

And who sat in the middle of it all?

Pinkie Pie, holding the weapon of mass-destruction in question, with her just-as-guilty companion covering her mouth in horrified amusement as the class started to evacuate, Miss Cheerilee somewhere in the background brandishing a fire extinguisher.

Twilight dropped the tray in terror.

This would…this would be…

She was scared to even think about it.

This meant…detention.

It was worse than a detention.

Twilight stood among the crowd of other qualifiers for the chess tournament, but unlike them, who buzzed with excitement and planned their strategies, she was sick with anxiety, guilt, and maybe a little bit of smoke poisoning.

She’d gotten a phone call home.

The scale of tongue-lashing she received on the car ride over was incomprehensible. Twilight had never seen her mother that bright with rage. Only beaten by the time Shining Armour had borrowed the family car in his senior year of highschool to visit Cadence at her out-of-state college.

There were a few scorched tables to pay for, but at least no one got hurt.

Twilight was just happy that her mother didn’t ground her from attending chess club or retract her offer to drive her.

Right before she was about to get out of the car, Velvet fixed her daughter with a firm stare in the overhead mirror.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you today, but I hope that it was just a one-time thing, young lady.”

“I told you, mom! It was those stupid-”

“Have I taught you nothing about taking responsibility?”

“But I-”

“Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight’s mouth clamped shut and she dropped her head.

“Sorry. Today’s just… not my day, so far.”

Velvet’s gaze softened, and she sighed. “Just… try to have fun at the club today, okay? I didn’t mean to… lecture you so hard, dear.

“I’m just worried that all of this stress about college applications is making you…” she trailed off noncommittally.

Twilight frowned. “What, you’re scared I’m snapping or something? Da Vinci style?”

“A mother worries. You’re just so…I worry you’re too tightly-wound, sweetie. This isn’t even the first time recently that you’ve been… struggling.”

“Last time was those girls too! I swear, I’m starting to dread chemistry. And I’m not tightly-wound, mom, I’m just focused on my goals.”

“And I’m very proud of you for that, but, well, you’re still young, you know? Your grades are good enough to get into just about any college you want.”

“Being a straight-A student doesn’t guarantee anything anymore,” Twilight said, glumly. “There are so many others fighting for the spot that could be mine. So many others have better academic portfolios than me. So many-”

“You’re starting to spiral again, Twily. Remember what-”

Twilight rolled her eyes, then took a dramatically over-the-top deep breath. “I remember what Dr Maneson said.”

“I’m just saying, honey. I’ve never seen a teenager with so many stress ulcers.”

Twilight opened the car door, then flashed her mother a half-hearted smile, not quite willing to be fully mad at her. “I know. But I’ll be fine. This is just par for the course. When I’m top of my field in ten years, I’ll be glad I pushed myself this hard.”

Twilight’s mother had wished her good luck then, but her daughter hadn’t heard, already jogging up the stairs with her backpack hoisted over her shoulders.

So, to recap: Twilight had gotten told off in class, been held wrongly culpable for blowing up part of the lab, got her mother called on her, and now received another lecture on the way to the chess game.

If she’d been an optimistic believer in things like cosmic balance or whatever other spiritual notions were synonymous with evil versus good, she’d have hoped that all that bad meant this chess tournament would have to go off without a hitch.

She deserved a win today.

The rounds drew on and Twilight had collected exactly two as the fifth round reared its foreboding head.

The crowd seemed to mostly be made up of anxious academics like her, all faces she recognised from former mathletics competitions, AP classes, or the library on the weekend. No one went to the school library on the weekend unless they meant business.

The first kid she lost to she knew from AP biology as a total scholarly maestro, rivaling her grades in every test. That alone was enough to muddle her head into forgetting move orders. The second was a serious chess-head who had a picture of Magnus Carlsen on a heart-shaped keychain attached to his checkered backpack, so she cut herself some slack on that one, at least. She was still a beginner, afterall.

There was one more round, which she had to win to be guaranteed a spot on the team.

After crushing the last two games, Twilight was feeling pretty confident.

…

No, okay, that was a total lie.

Her heart was pounding, her palms were grossly sweaty, and her glasses kept slipping from the bridge of her nose, haplessly reminding her that not only was she going to never make it into a good college because she didn’t have any stupid hobbies like normal kids her age, but she was also, of course, partially blind too and LASIK was expensive and all it would take was for her glasses to break one day and she’d be basically forced to accept a blurry hellscape until she could get new ones and her mother would-

She was spiraling.

Twilight took a deep breath, as Cadence had taught her.

Normally, Twilight would hesitate to take advice, but this particular tidbit was backed up by decades of neurochemical research that showed adequate oxygenation helped to lower heart rate.

Lower heart rate. That was…good.

There was a brief recess during which players were offered the chance to grab refreshments, so basically everyone was either standing around the drinks table or sitting off in a corner with their friends, studying up what was definitely a tie-breaker round for most of them.

Twilight, however, was much too busy panicking to get much of anything down her throat except a series of gulps from her thermos, which contained a brew of nutritional density that she’d conjured up years ago to make eating more efficient.

Who had the time to cook when a blender and multivitamins were so much faster? People without an agenda, that’s who.

She was amazing. She was brilliant. She could do this.

After all, anyone who was dedicated enough to optimize nutrient delivery into their body was surely dedicated enough they could win a simple game.

Indigo Zap, the president of the Crystal Prep chess team who wouldn't stop referring to the crowd of contestants as ‘chess-sweats’, announced the start of every round with seemingly limitless gusto. She practically yelled every word, enthusiasm unmatched by her audience.

Though to be fair, Twilight doubted anyone could match her volume.

“Now! Are we ready to rumble?”

She cupped her ear exaggeratedly, turning towards the audience of competitors. There was an awkward mumble of cheers, earning everyone an unimpressed glare from the president.

“I said! Are we ready to RUUUUUUMBLE?”

A slightly louder cheer resounded and Indigo rolled her eyes.

“Jeez, you’d think you’re all being held at gunpoint to be here. This is a game people! Have some fun!”

When the hall remained quiet, Indigo sighed, grumbled something about typical nerds, then began calling out pairings by their assigned numbers.

Twilight, upon hearing her number called, headed off to the table Indigo had set her on. She sat down and pursed her lips anxiously, waiting for her opponent to stop taking their sweet time and finally join her.

So much depended on this. So much.

Her worst nightmares of community college and parental disappointment and Cadence sadly shaking her head as she sent her off to join a sports team and wear a uniform and sweat and swirlies in the locker room started playing in repeat.

And then, the chair in front of her was finally drawn.

Twilight looked up, instinctively starting to extend a hand for a sportsman-like shake.

Her fingers didn’t even get an inch above the table before they froze mid-air, her eyes bulging as they focused not on a pressed shirt or Crystal Prep uniform, but a blight of rainbow hair and pink eyes that, despite being covered by a pair of sunglasses, were recognisable as the same ones that had fixed with Twilight with so many scorned looks throughout her high school career.

In that moment, those eyes felt like they belonged to the devil.

Twilight was too shocked to do anything but gape.

She was wearing a jacket with the hood pulled up over her head and the glasses were different, but it was Rainbow Dash alright. It was hard to miss the colorful strands curling out from beneath the hood’s edge.

Rainbow Dash planted her hand on the table, hovering above Twilight with her head tilted bemusedly to the side, fixed her with an equally displeased expression.

“If it isn’t Egghead Prime herself,” Dash said, adjusting the collar of her jacket.

“Wh-”

Twilight sprang to her feet, letting out a yelp that was equal parts horror and shock.

“What are you doing here?!”

Dash crossed her arms, something unclear flickering in her features as she glanced at the side. Twilight would, at a later date, realize her gaze had been fixed upon the exit behind her.

Then, she turned back towards Twilight and rolled her eyes without an answer, her attitude problem returning before there was any time to think too deeply about her previous expression.

“Is there a problem here, ladies?”

Twilight turned to see Indigo Zap had materialized at her side, and realized how this must look. She looked like she was losing her marbles, eyes wide like she’d seen a ghost, standing a full few feet away from the chess board like it had burned her.

Embarrassed, Twilight sat down.

“N…no…” Twilight muttered, sheepishly.

Indigo continued to stare at Twilight, eyes narrowed, before a grin thundered across her features. “Good! Best of luck to you both!”

She clapped Twilight on the back, beamed at Dash, then strode away to continue checking on the next few tables.

Twilight’s arms remained clasped to her sides for a few seconds more, before she pointed an accusatory finger at Dash.

“Why are you here? Was ruining the entire subject of chemistry not enough for today? You had to come and mess up chess too?”

Dash looked momentarily taken aback, her eyebrows raised.

“You think I have nothing better to do than follow you around? I’m here to do the exact same thing as you, genius.”

“And what’s with that ridiculous getup? What, are you too cool to be here? You have to show up in a disguise? Is chess too lame for the great Rainbow Dash?”

“Don’t say my name so loud!” Dash snapped, then sunk back in her seat as the shout drew some looks from the tables around them. She shifted in the chair. “Too cool for you, for sure.”

Twilight’s eye twitched. “Do you ever have anything better to say than some juvenile retort?”

“Don’t you ever have anything better to say that isn’t about how much better and smarter you are than everyone else?”

“I never-”

“Let’s just get this game over and done with. Crushing you won’t take long.”

Twilight scoffed. “Psh. Sure you are.”

“I am!”

“You? Chess? Do you even know what the pieces are called?”

Dash’s lips thinned into a line. The expected rebuttal never came, instead, she started to smile.

She seemed to consider something, then took off the shades, folding them and placing them to the side of the board, then lowered her hood.

“Should we start the game?”

Twilight glowered at her, then lowered her gaze expectantly to the board.

Two diametrically-opposed armies faced in a square labyrinth of equal tiles.

It was commonly accepted among players that white, the army Dash was assigned at the same time their pairing was dealt, started with an advantage.

Twilight watched as Dash tapped the timer, then pushed a pawn to E4.

Going into the game, Twilight had run several calculations and streams of analysis. How familiar was Dash with chess?

Advancing the king’s pawn to E4 was a standard move, the most beginning move for white. It set up control of the center and opened the path for the white-squared bishop as well as the queen. Whether this was Dash’s intent or not remained unclear; jocks like her typically didn’t have much interest in the theory behind even the physical sports they played.

Twilight mirrored the move with a pawn to E5. The most common move following the step of white’s E4.

Dash drew her knight to F3. A book move.

Straight to attacking Twilight’s pawn. That was certainly in character.

Twilight defended by moving her knight to C6.

Her brow twitched slightly, and she suddenly felt nervous.

Dash activated her light-squared bishop to C4.

Twilight’s brow twitched as she moved her knight to f6, attacking the first pawn that Dash had moved.

This was immediately followed by Dash’s knight moving to g5.

Twilight had to restrain herself from smiling. Any suspicions she had of Dash attacking with a plan or knowing much opening theory died in that moment.

She was just moving the pretty horsey to attack Twilight’s pawn again!

This was easy. Twilight looked up to see Dash’s expression was unfazed, eyes downcast and focused on the pieces.

Twilight moved the queen’s pawn to d5, blocking Dash’s bishop. If Dash tried to take any of the attacked pieces now, Twilight could simply recapture and they’d be equal in material, with Twilight’s queen staring down the white pawn on g2, ripe for the taking. From there, she could challenge the kingside rook and prevent Dash from castling, if she even knew what that was!

As she expected, Dash plucked the pawn on d5 like a gorilla plucking a ripe banana from the jungle floor.

Twilight recaptured with her knight, confidence building back up.

The nightmares dissipated as she started to once again picture herself, this time, not as a community college failure, but as someone sitting giddily at her desk adding chess team to her list of accolades for her college application.

She expected Dash’s fingers to close around the bishop’s point, but instead, she went for the knight, taking Twilight’s pawn on f7.

Twilight was ecstatic. Gosh, what even were these moves?

She lost the ability to castle, but now she was up a knight. Of course, Dash could check her with the queen now, but what good would that do? Twilight would simply move her king back to safety and nip that little plan in the bud.

Twilight merrily picked the black knight back up, and dared another look at Dash.

She didn’t get a look back, however, as Dash moved her queen to the expected f3.

“Check,” Dash said, still looking down at the board. Twilight resisted the urge to made a snide comment. In most tournaments, you don’t even have to announce the check. Did Dash know anything?

Twilight moved her king to g8, tidily sliding in next to her dark-squared bishop and rook. If the game took much longer, she could move a pawn forward to fianchetto her bishop, then swap the places of the king and rook and it would be like she had the right to castle all along. Easy!

A perfect defense position.

Dash snatched Twilight’s bishop.

This time, when Twilight looked up, Dash was staring right at her.

“Check,” she said, toneless.

Twilight scowled, then looked down at the board.

Suddenly, she felt sick.

No. No. NO!

Twilight felt a bead of sweat form and roll down her back.

She heard the timer ticking to her left. She heard the chatter going on around her. She heard pieces clacking against wooden squares and announcements of checks and groans of defeat as the time ticked on.

Twilight had made a serious blunder.

Twilight had blundered. Seriously.

There was a trickle of hope that Dash hadn’t realized the position they were in, the vain prayer that maybe, just maybe, Twilight hadn’t underestimated her.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t in any way shape or form right.

She was Rainbow Dash. Notorious for kicking balls around, being too loud in class, and overall being the biggest pain in Twilight’s backside since recess was mandatory in elementary school.

She moved her bishop to e6, the only move she could make in this position.

Rainbow Dash smirked, then delivered the blow.

“Checkmate,” she said, simply, then got up from the chair and tucked it back in, as if she hadn’t just shattered Twilight’s entire understanding of high school hierarchies.

Twilight was left alone at the table, dumfounded, her dry eyes fixated upon the black and white snapshot of her undeniable failure.

Author's Note

First chapter of my first fic! This is an obligatory high school AU based around the concept of it being absolutely fascinating to me that Rainbow Danger Dash, the expected featherhead, could excel at a highly strategy-based game like chess.

I mean, if you think about it, she loves the Equestria equivalent of Battleships, so why not? I liked the idea of her dad being a chess grandmaster at some point and teaching her, like how knowing multiple languages seems like a feat to learn, yet comes easy if you were taught from a young age.

I made Twilight absolutely insufferable, but fear not! She gets knocked down a peg.

I honestly don't really expect anyone to want to read this apart from myself. I am the target audience; I mostly just wanted an excuse to write some silly Twidash.

Detention Breakdown

The next few days were a blur to Twilight. She studied, slept, and went to school. But she wasn’t, by any means, living.

Everything felt dreamlike, or rather, nightmare-like, as she waited for the dreaded meeting with Cadence, where she’d have to deliver the painful news that Plan A didn’t work out and she had literally nothing to put on that stupid application. Literally nothing.

She was literally nothing.

She couldn’t even manage getting a simple, stupid, hobby.

Everything was blurry, until the day of the detention. Twilight almost went right home after school ended, so used to her routine.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first thing she messed up that week.

The second Cheerilee left the room the room started to focus again.

Empty desks, ticking clock, chalkboard with stark white words screaming DETENTION END: 5PM.

Twilight was no stranger to empty desks or the school after everyone else was gone, but this time, it felt like a kaleidoscope that contained rubble instead of shiny beads. She wasn’t here because she chose to study extra. She was here because she was mandated to.

Mandated as a criminal.

The only other person in the room was Rainbow Dash, conveniently, the main focus of Twilight’s most recent nightmares.

That scene- that painful scene, played behind Twilight’s closed eyelids whenever she blinked or tried to get in a cycle of polyphasic sleep.

Checkmate.

Slowly, Twilight moved her head to look at her, really look at her, for the first time since that day.

She was reclined in her chair, hood draped over her eyes with her feet kicked up the second Cheerilee vacated the space. She clearly wasn’t a stranger to this routine, seemingly already snoring.

She wouldn’t get much of a nap today, however, as a pair of hands jolted her awake by slamming against her desk. Dash flinched, lifting her hood only to be met with the brutal gaze of one frazzled Twilight ‘Egghead’ Sparkle.

“How did you- what was that?”

Rainbow Dash lazily tilted her head back, groaning.

“Detentions are supposed to be silent, you know. I’m trying to think about what I’ve done.”

“Since when are you a- a-” Twilight spluttered. “Frickin- chess prodigy?”

At this, Dash smirked. “What, don’t tell me your scrunchie’s in a bunch because you got crushed in six moves?”

“I didn’t get- I-”

“You very much did. With a Fegatello Attack, too. I wouldn’t even have to be a chess prodigy- you blundered so hard that my newborn cousin could sweep you!”

Twilight let out a shriek that could only be described as utterly anguished. She grabbed Dash by her shirt and shook her with the fury that only a scrawny nerd sucking at something could manage.

“You cheated! How the heck do you even- do you even know how to spell Fegatello?”

Dash blanched.

Twilight actually felt pretty strong- probably the adrenaline or something. Clearly, losing affected twiggy dweebs like babies trapped under cars affected mothers.

Dash shook her attacker off and rolled her eyes, fixing the now-crumpled collar of her t-shirt with a huff.

“Or maybe you just suck?”

“You’re a total dumbass! How could you beat me at chess no less?”

“Because you totally suck at it, asshole. You played like you’d never even seen a board in your life!”

“In- in every subject…”

Twilight took a deep breath that sounded way too hollow to be healthy, starting to pace back and forth in front of Dash’s desk.

“In every subject! I’ve seen your grades! You’re a straight D minus! I don’t even know how you’re allowed to stay on any of your sports teams! I can’t even figure out how you’re in any of my classes! And you-”

She suddenly whirled around and pointed an accusatory finger at what she clearly deemed to be the current bane of her existence.

“And you beat me!”

“You missed the simplest fork that literally even kids get taught in their first chess class, if I hadn’t beaten you, the elementary schoolers in the next hall would have. Maybe they would be more your level, Twibaby.

“I literally cannot exaggerate how famously stupid and avoidable that blunder was.”

“How did you do it? I just don’t- how can-”

Twilight balled her hands up in her hair, then fell back into her chair, the accompanying desk clattering from the impact.

If it wasn’t for her hyperventilating, the room would almost be quiet enough for Rainbow to take her planned nap.

Almost…

She sighed, then stood, waltzing over to Twilight’s desk and scooping up her backpack.

“Hey, that’s my-”

“Shut up, shitnerd,” Rainbow snapped, rifling through Twilight’s bag for only a moment before her hand closed around the book she’d been looking for. She smacked it down on the desk in front of her.

It was the book Twilight had been reading during the chemistry lesson that had landed her in the detention room they currently occupied.

“Classic Games and What We Can Learn From Them? I don’t…”

Dash rolled her eyes again, then pointed at the name of the author.

Bow Hothoof, Grandmaster.

“My dad, dweebus. I’ve been competing in tournaments since before I could friggin’ read the guides he writes.”

Twilight stared in disbelief at the cover of the book as Dash returned to her seat, kicking her feet up on the desk. She crossed her arms and closed her eyes as Twilight stewed in the revelation.

“You’re a…you-”

“What? Shocked that a dumbass like me could be smarter than you at something? Prissy precious genius Twilight Sparkle?”

“I didn’t think that…”

Dash’s eyes snapped open and she sat up. She rounded on Twilight.

“What? You think that just ‘cos you do well in exams, that makes you better than me? You think you’re better than any other asshole in this stupid school?

“You carry yourself around like you’re hot shit, like everyone else is beneath you, like the reason that no one likes you or wants to hang out with you is because you’re too good for them.

“Well, newsflash, Einstein, you just suck. I might get garbage grades because I don’t try, but I’m still goddamn awesome, and, in case it still hasn’t sunk in, I pulverized you in a series of moves that would have made a chess engine cry in shame.

“So get over yourself, because everyone else sure has!”

With that, she grabbed her backpack, and strode indignantly to the door.

“Wait! But the detention-”

“Miss Cheerilee can find me outside. I’m out of here.”

When the door slammed behind her, Twilight felt it like the thud was aimed straight at her forehead.

She momentarily stared down at her desk, before jumping to her feet and chasing after Dash.

What am I doing? Miss Cheerilee could be back at any moment and if she finds me gone, I’ll be in even deeper trouble for skipping detention-

“Wait! Rainbow Dash!”

Twilight’s lungs heaved as she sprinted, wondering how exactly Dash had managed to get so far out of the room in such a short period of time. Or maybe Twilight was just extremely unathletic.

Twilight ran until she reached the front entrance to the school, only noticing Dash by the lockers from her peripheral. She’d overinvested in her momentum, however, and instead of coming to the intended stop, she skidded and tripped over her own feet, landing in a pile by the door.

Unimpressed, Dash strode closer, staring down at her with a clear expression of disgust.

“What do you want?”

Twilight faltered, breathing heavily. “Just… just give me… a second…”

“Jeez, are you alright?” Dash raised an eyebrow, lip curling. “You look like one of those sickly little chihuahuas that look like they’re about to croak at any moment. How out of shape are you?”

Twilight heaved. “Very.”

Dash gave her a moment to catch her breath.

“I know that… I think- you’re right. I haven’t… I haven’t been fair to you.”

“No shit.”

Twilight looked up, finding Dash’s eyes relentlessly cold, lowered into slits with more simmering rage than a volcano about to blow.

There was something scary in that look, not because Dash posed any real danger of pummeling Twilight like she probably wanted to, but rather because of the lack of action in it.

Dash wasn’t jumping into an outburst of troglodyte rage; she may have snapped at Twilight but ultimately she decided to leave. She could just walk away from her, and she did. She didn’t deem Twilight worthy of sticking around to humor, regardless of how mammoth her feelings seemed to her.

Twilight’s failure wasn’t important to her, not any more than a one-liner joke would have been. She got crushed, and that was funny because of who Twilight portrayed herself as, and that was that.

Twilight was suddenly faced with a crushing notion of sonder that grew far beyond the mundane meaning of the word.

It wasn’t even that nobody else cared about the things she did. She was aware of that already.

It was the fact that no matter how much she achieved, or how many eyes stared up at her panoply of accolades, how many objective measures proved she was far beyond average - none of that mattered.

She was crushed by the futility of wanting to be something.

And maybe it was just the pressure of exams getting to her, the pressure of having to write dozens of drafts and rewrites of personal statements, of needing every waking moment to be productive, or maybe even the simplest fact that she hadn’t gotten more than four hours of sleep in… long enough that she couldn’t remember.

Maybe it was all of that and the fact that all of her suffering really meant very little at all that made Twilight start to cry.

Not even just cry. It may have started that way, but eventually the little sniffles devolved into body-shaking sobs, complete with ugly snorts and hair sticking to her face and everything.

“Oh- okay, we’re crying now- god-”

“I’m- I’m sorry-”

Twilight wiped furiously at her eyes with her sleeves, her glasses fogging up as she lifted them over her face.

“No, hey, maybe let’s- uh- maybe let’s stop crying-”

Twilight only wailed harder, feeling increasingly more pathetic because she was making even stupid Rainbow Dash uncomfortable with her implosive level of self-loathing.

“Jesus…”

Then, unexpectedly, she felt an awkward tug at one of the arms covering her face.

“Come on, get up.”

The tug came again, much harder this time when Twilight didn’t obey at first. She stumbled to her feet, still covering her face, and let herself be dragged down one of the hallways.

Maybe Dash was going to take her out back and shoot her. Put her out of her misery.

There was no such luck as Twilight recognised the entrance to the girl’s bathroom.

Once over the sink, her hopes were once again raised that Rainbow Dash would perhaps try to drown her.

Then, she caught sight of her tear-stained face in the reflection, made only grimmer by the general sheen of grime that all highschool bathrooms seemed to possess, and started to cry again, her breathing much faster than before.

She was even making Dash pity her.

She wasn’t better than anyone.

She wasn’t even better than this.

Dash tugged a wad of tissue paper from one of the dispensers by the sinks, soaking it with cold water before pressing it into Twilight’s hand.

“Put that to your face.”

“Wh- why?”

“Because- man, I don’t know. Just do it!”

Twilight frowned, but relented, lifting up her streaky glasses to dab at her eyes. Icy water dripped down her sleeves, pooling under her elbows, and she cringed, but, after a few minutes, she felt the rapid rate of her heart slow down, and the world seemed a little bit more substantial again.

Without her crying and snotty sniffling, the bathroom was dead quiet.

Twilight glanced at Dash in the reflection, who was standing some distance away, very pointedly not looking back at her.

After a few moments, Dash spoke.

“One of my friends- Fluttershy- she said something about how cold water on your face is meant to, like, instantly shut down anxiety or a panic attack. I don’t know if that’s what you were doing or anything but…I think she said it was called a dive reflex, or something.

“Something about ancient mammals diving into water to escape predators and the virgin nerve or whatever it’s called.”

Twilight looked back down at the sink.

“Vagus nerve.”

“Huh?”

“It’s called the vagus nerve, not the virgin nerve.”

“More like the nerve of this virgin to correct me.”

Twilight tried to glare at her, as she usually would for this clear attempt at getting a rise of her, but she found very little power behind the action. Instead, she sighed.

“Why are you… being nice to me?”

“What was I supposed to do when you started sobbing in a heap at my feet? Kick you?”

“Well, yeah. We’re not exactly friends or anything. I just got done insulting you. You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, I just think you’re annoying as shit.”

Twilight blistered. “I guess I kind of am, huh.”

“The first step is admitting you have a problem.”

“Well! You can be an ass too!”

“Only because you’re an ass first!”

Twilight turned around, looking at Dash head-on instead of through a mirror. She started to prepare the second scathing line to her accusation, but as she opened her mouth, it died at her lips.

Who…who was the ass first? Twilight couldn’t remember when she decided the majority of the student body was against her.

Dash raised an eyebrow, and Twilight pursed her lips.

“I apologize.”

“You… what?”

“I’m… sorry?”

“No, I mean, I got that much, but, like, why?”

“I guess I just realized that I’ve been… I know I can be a bit… aggressive. I don’t really find it easy to… interact with others, so to speak. On any level. Especially when I’m really…really stressed…which is…”

“Often?”

Twilight smiled slightly. “I think so.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “Typical nerd.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment, before Dash awkwardly stuck a hand out.

“Truce?”

Twilight stared at it for a moment, before robotically sliding her own palm against Dash’s. “Truce.”

The girls let their hands fall back to their sides, and Twilight suddenly came back to reality.

“Oh my gosh, we need to get back to detention!”

“I don’t know, I kind of have PTSD there now,” Dash said as she started to head towards the bathroom exit.

Twilight absently trailed after her, already thinking about the consequences her actions may now have. She had never had to consider something like a detention before, let alone what would happen for leaving one early.

“PTSD? Why?”

“It’s where I got assaulted by a rattled nerd.”

“I did not assault you-”

Dash shot Twilight a teasing look, before pretending to look down the collar of her shirt. “I probably have bruises from where you throttled me.”

“I…gently shook you.”

“I may have shaken baby syndrome.”

“You’re not a baby!”

“Lucky for you! You know what they do to baby-rattlers in prison?”

Surprising herself, Twilight felt a laugh bubble up. “I have to go back there anyway. I left all my stuff.”

“That was pretty dumb of you, wasn’t it, Miss Genius?”

“I wasn’t really… thinking when I followed you out here,” Twilight said, sheepishly.

They walked in tandem until they reached the classroom door, peering inside to see Cheerilee still wasn’t back. Thankfully.

“Are we chill enough with each other that I can make fun of you for that blunder again?”

“Absolutely not-”

“Because that was-” Dash snorted. “That was abysmal.”

This time, Twilight had no problem glaring at her while they returned to their respective desks. She briefly stopped to wonder why Rainbow Dash bothered to return with her, considering she was already committed to dealing with the punishment.

“I honestly have no idea how someone with your brain can screw up like that. Especially when you clearly studied up before the games.”

Twilight slumped in her chair. “Playing a game is different to reading theory. And now I… Now I didn’t make the team.”

Dash raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“They’re redoing the tournament. Something about some of the players rigging up StockFish under the table. The whole ranking’s cooked.”

“Wait- what?”

“I mean, I guess you have another shot if you really wanted to-”

Then, Twilight sat up abruptly in her chair and turned towards Dash.

“Teach me.”

“What?”

“Teach me. How to play. I mean, clearly you’re good at the game and know a lot about it.”

Dash grimaced. “Yeah. No.”

“Please.”

“No offense, but that sounds like a horrible idea. I think I would genuinely rather pick my eyes out with a toothpick, cell by cell.”

“What do I need to do to convince you? I’ll even pay you!”

At this, Rainbow Dash perked up. “How much?”

“How much do you want?”

“Name a number.”

“Uhm, a hundred dollars an hour.”

Dash spluttered. “A hundred—”

“What, too much? Too little?”

“Where are you getting this kind of money?”

“It’s the standard amount my parents paid my tutors in middle school,” Twilight said sheepishly, fiddling with the hem of her cardigan. “Before I mastered independent study.”

Dash seemed to consider this for a moment, before sticking out her hand again. “Okay, deal.”

Twilight beamed, ecstatically shaking Dash’s hand. “Deal!”

Dash couldn’t help but feel like she’d just sold her soul.

Author's Note

Twilight Sparkle - repressed nerd.

I don't know, I just thought being so tightly-wound would result in an eventual breakdown, don't you think? I feel like when I'm particularly stressed, I'm just about ready to start sobbing in front of anyone who pushes me too hard.

Returns

Twilight impatiently drummed her fingers against the table, lifting her face-down phone from the table to check the time again.

Her expression hardened into a scowl as started to fidget in her chair. She felt the urge to get up and perhaps go looking for Rainbow Dash, who was now (Twilight checked the clock again) twelve entire minutes late to their chess tutoring session, but doing so would mean sacrificing the prime library real estate she had.

Everyone knew that the best spot was the table behind the fantasy section; the window was perfectly shaded past 3pm so the sun never got in your eyes or reflected painfully off white pages, but remained light enough that you never had to strain your eyes to read, like the tables behind the history section. As soon as she got up, some other study group would bag it and she’d have to go elsewhere.

Thus, she was forced to remain seated, anxiously opening and closing the book she’d been reading that day, not wanting to get too invested just in case Dash chose that exact moment to show up.

Gosh, did punctuality mean nothing anymore? Where was this cruel society going, if youths lost the importance of attending appointments on time? Not to mention the fact that it was also just plain rude, and Twilight was paying by the hour. That was important too.

Twelve minutes ticked to fifteen. Twilight started to wonder if perhaps the fault lied with her. Maybe she got the time wrong.

Then she giggled to herself. She never got the time wrong.

Maybe Dash got run over by some kid on a bike on the way over. Even though Principal Celestia had a whole assembly about waiting to get past the school gates before starting your cycle home, scarcely anyone respected that rule. Twilight had nearly gotten herself plowed down by a BMX-riding psycho while lost in a book all too many times to not speak on the matter from experience.

Fifteen minutes loomed into twenty, and Twilight started to consider just packing up.

She sighed, then started to put the pieces she’d set up away into the portable chess set she’d brought from home. That’s what she got for trusting someone like Rainbow.

She had been foolish for assuming that seeing her breakdown would be enough to form some sort of… maybe bond wasn’t quite the right word, but… she thought she’d at least respect Twilight enough to actually attend their session.

Right as Twilight closed the box, Dash tossed her bag into the seat opposite, clearly out of breath.

“Shit, sorry—are you packing up already?”

Twilight leered at her. “You’re—” she looked back down at her phone. “Twenty-three minutes tardy!”

“My momma says you’re not allowed to call me that word.”

“Do you think punctuality is some sort of joke? I hope you know I’m docking your rate for this.”

Dash grimaced. “That’s fair, but I had a good reason.”

“Which is…?”

Dash took out her phone, glanced at the screen, then put it away, taking her sweet time to answer as she sat down.

“Pinkie Pie isn’t answering her phone, so I went down to her house to try and see if she was just sick or something, but she wasn’t there. The trip took me longer than I thought it would… so I was late.” She bowed her head exaggeratedly. “Accept my sincerest apologies, your highness.”

She pouted, but Twilight’s expression softened slightly. “Is she… okay?”

“She’s fine,” Dash scowled. “She sent me a GIF of a cat doing a handstand so I know she’s alive. She just skipped detention because she can somehow get away with just about anything that I get shit for but, that’s Pinkie for ya. She works in mysterious ways.”

“What, like Santa Claus?” Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“Exactly like Santa Claus. Now you’re getting it, egghead.”

“Would you stop calling me names?”

“Nah, I think I like egghead. Your head’s kinda shaped like one. Maybe the pressure from your gigantic brain is like…” Dash made a slight motion with her hands. “Pushing the skull upwards.”

“I am this close to deciding this session isn’t worth it.”

“Hey, hey, let’s not get hasty there! I was just messing with you.”

“Fine! Then I’ll give you an awful nickname too! Let’s see, how about… featherbrain!”

“See, that’s just rude, Twilight,” Dash exclaimed, putting her hand to her chest as if wounded. “I thought we had a truce!”

“Egghead is worse than featherbrain!”

“Nerd logic,” Dash sighed, then shook her head. “Whatever, just get the chess set back out. You like… know where the pieces go, right?”

Twilight gave her a look that briefly reminded Dash of a scorned cat being denied wet food.

Once the pieces were set up, Dash reclined in her chair and gave Twilight a bored look.

“Welp, let’s see what you got then. You can be white. Show me your go-to opening.”

Twilight obeyed, advancing the king’s pawn by two squares. She didn’t want to admit it, and would probably die before that ever happened, but the familiar need for approval was bubbling up her throat, making her want to… impress Dash, at least a bit.

Dash may have been an asshole on the best days, but whilst sitting in the seat opposite Twilight, she was a teacher.

The games trudged on and, although Twilight knew she had every main line memorized perfectly, she was still getting checkmated in every. Single. One. At some point, it stopped feeling like a game, and more like Twilight hitching herself up on a punching bag for Dash to take swings at.

Somewhere after 5-0, Twilight realized during a pause that Dash wasn't looking at the board, but rather at her.

Her eyes were narrowed for a moment, scrutinizing.

“You play like a bot.”

“I do not!”

“Do too.”

“Why, just because I follow openings that have been established for centuries, I’m a robot, now?”

Something in Twilight briefly stung. It was not the first time she’d been likened to a machine. It was rarely every positive.

“You're frickin’ pathological. You need, like, psychiatric intervention or something for your need to get a gold star.”

“Can you just play the next move already?”

“You sure you want me to? You wouldn't rather I just give you an A plus for effort?”

“You're insufferable and I'd rather you just do what I'm paying you to do.”

Dash smirked, then shrugged, and slid her queen forward.

“Check,” she announced.

Twilight gnawed at the inside of her cheeks, but begrudgingly shifted her king out of the way behind the line of pawns on his side.

Seeing this, Dash promptly snapped up the pawn Twilight had left hanging.

“Check.”

Twilight's king was meekly pushed further into the hidey-hole Dash's ruthless assault was forcing him into, leaving the white bishop free for the taking.

With the pile of pieces on Dash's side of the board quickly growing, Twilight let out a disgruntled huff.

“You're so focused on memorizing the lines you're not reacting to any unconventional move.”

Dash’s bishop came out and with that, the game came to an anticlimactic end.

“Checkmate,” she announced. “Damn, you like…suck suck.”

She picked up Twilight’s king, then flicked it across the table, sending the poor piece tumbling into Twilight’s lap.

Upon replacing him to his former position, Twilight pouted. “Insulting me isn't conducive to a healthy learning environment.”

“Sucking so bad you make me want to watch grandmaster games for therapy isn't conductive to a healthy teaching environment.”

“Conducive.”

“Use all the big words you want, egghead, you still suck.”

Dash glanced at her watch, then promptly stood up. “That's time!”

“What? But I hardly learned anything!”

“Well, I learned a lot about your game style. I can tailor some sort of plan now… or something.”

Twilight glared at Dash as she started to pack her things up. “The next tournament for the team is in two weeks, how are you exactly going to teach me anything if all our lessons are just going to involve you crushing me then leaving?”

“I'm crushing you with purpose,” Dash argued, then patted Twilight on the head, prompting the other girl to swat the hand away as if it were an irritating mosquito just begging to be crushed between two books. “Same time tomorrow?”

Twilight's expression didn't waver, but she begrudgingly nodded.

“Same time tomorrow.”

Dash started to leave, when Twilight called out to her, causing her to backtrack and see Twilight tripping over her chair to get up.

“Wait! Give me your phone.”

“No offense, but that's a terrible way to mug someone. No shiv or anything.”

“To put my number in, featherbrain. If you're late again, I need to be able to reach you.”

Dash said something about just joking, but Twilight was unfazed, looking at her expectantly.

Sighing, Dash handed the device over.

“I better not get any calls informing me you subscribed me to Geek Weekly.”

Twilight typed her number in and labeled the contact simply with her name. Upon getting her phone back, Dash typed something else in, then cheekily turned the screen around, showing Twilight the new contact name of ‘Egghead Prime.’

Before she could pluck the phone away, Dash ran away from Twilight.

When she was out of view, Twilight's phone buzzed with a new message.

Unknown Contact: you better name my contact something cool

Rolling her eyes, Twilight started to make a profile for her new… Not friend, really. New mentor.

She hesitated when typing the name in, then smiled, plugging in ‘Featherbrain.’

Among Twilight's scarce contacts, all named things like ‘Shining Armor, brother’, ‘Twinkle Rain, lab partner’ and ‘Diamond Smile, Dentist Office’, Dash stood out.

That felt… It felt different. Annoying.

Annoying was the understatement of the century, as it turned out.

If Twilight's expansive vocabulary contained any curse words, she'd be firing them all off in a line like a general sending soldiers into battle.

Scratch that, she'd be packing them into grenades and sending them down a conveyor belt right into that stupid rainbow-coloured menace’s throat.

How dare she stand Twilight up!

After waiting for thirty-three whole minutes, Twilight was just about ready to swing her backpack at Dash’s face the next time she saw her, which would surely be a lethal attack, considering the dense compendiums and textbooks she carted around on the daily.

Sure, she’d been late to all of their sessions thus far, rounding out to seven in total, now, but they’d all been forgivable. As promised, Twilight had docked Dash’s payout, but even with the renegotiated rate (the result of Twilight’s parents failing to see her new tutor’s credentials), the money alone should have been incentive enough for timeliness. At least she had shown up those seven times.

But now? Now she hadn’t even shown her sorry face to give the half-hearted excuses Twilight was getting used to hearing. Not even a text! Her phone was going straight to voicemail!

Well, Twilight was nothing if not relentlessly determined. Nothing if not at least 30% more petty than the average ticked-off academic.

That was why she found herself on the bus, glaring determinedly at the map displayed across her phone screen.

The messenger application Dash had forced her to install was about to be her downfall, for it also contained a location tracker that gave you live updates to the geographical position of those in your contacts list.

Honestly, Twilight knew her chess mentor was remarkably dense for someone who could apparently keep up with their grandmaster father (according to the boast-lord’s own accounts, anyhow), but did she not care about her safety at all?

Actually, that was turning out in Twilight’s favor. For Dash was certainly in danger, based on the series of violent imagery she was the unfortunate victim in that moment.

The ear-lashing Twilight would unleash…

She was so peeved that she didn’t even remember to say thanks to the bus driver as she hopped off, marching forward with her nose pressed to the map, muttering to herself as she did so.

By now, an entire hour and a half had passed since their tutoring session was due to start, and October’s early sunset cast an approaching sheen of navy across the sky. Twilight had never really been out after dark before, but that certainly wasn’t going to stop her now.

The streetlamps around her flickered to life all at once, bathing the stone path towards Canterlot’s riverside in a marigold glow. If she hadn’t been so vexed, maybe Twilight would have paused to admire how pretty the scenery was, perfect when paired with the crisp autumn air.

She marched all the way up a set of metal stairs to the stone walls lining the descending slopes, against which Starswirl river gently lapped, not stopping until her eyes lifted from the phone screen to see a lone figure perched upon the concrete some distance away.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight shrieked like a cat about to claw someone’s eyes out, causing the figure to startle and sit upright.

She broke into a sprint and prepared a mental order of attacks that would never come to fruition as she ground to a halt in front of her target, hands clenched angrily at her sides.

Of course, she would never really hit Dash.

She’d probably get hit back, or worse, Dash would dodge from years of mastering a variety of sports and Twilight would end up falling flat on her face.

Dash stared at Twilight, looking her up and down for a moment, before turning back towards the river. Across the water lie the next town over, the docks lit whilst a cargo ship approached.

There was a beat.

“Well?” Twilight asked, indignantly. “Isn’t there anything you’d like to say to me? Another excuse, perhaps?”

Dash didn’t say anything for a moment, merely lifted her hand to her mouth and took a drag of what Twilight saw was a cigarette.

Exhaling, she finally turned back around and fixed Twilight with an unreadable look.

“Sorry.”

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say for skipping our tutoring session without warning?”

“What do you want me to say? You can dock my pay again.”

“Oh, you best believe I’m going to do just that! I have half a mind to fire you!”

“Do it then. What difference does it make?”

At this, Twilight’s mind stuttered to a standstill.

“What?”

“What do you even want?” Rainbow fully turned herself around, disgruntled, kicking her legs over the wall. “How did you even find me?”

Suddenly feeling… quite foolish, Twilight raised her phone. “Your…uhm, EqMessenger map’s on.”

“So you tracked me? Wow, sociopath much? What, came to yell at me? Fight me maybe? Well, I hate to break it to you, egghead, but I could splay you out on the tarmac in ten seconds flat.”

Something wasn’t quite right here. This wasn’t… this didn’t feel like the normal teasing Twilight had grown accustomed to.

Over the past week, she’d quickly learned that her initial assessment of Dash’s personality was perhaps tainted by her own cynicism. It wasn’t that she was necessarily the biggest jerk in the school; she just kind of spoke like that to people. Even to her own friends, who just laughed it off and japed back with similar retorts of their own.

Twilight had watched the way Rainbow interacted with her friend group since their truce was established - not in a creepy way of anything, just casual observation. In the way you start to notice things once they’ve initially been drawn to your attention. Like when the word of the day you’d never even heard of suddenly enters everyone else’s lexicon overnight.

Dash felt different. She felt… prickly.

Twilight wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Turning around and going home seemed even more stupid than just demanding an explanation now, which was a daft plan from the beginning. Maybe Rainbow was rubbing off on her.

Twilight picked at her nails. “Are you… okay?”

Scowling, Dash turned back around to her previous position, face once again obscured from the other girl’s vision. “Why are you even asking? Like you even care.”

Did she even care? Maybe. She wouldn’t be asking if she didn’t.

Upon saying as much, Dash still refused to turn back around.

“I don’t know. Because it’s the normal social thing to do?”

“Look at me. When have I ever done something because it’s the normal social thing to do?”

This earned her a glance and a slight, half-hearted smirk.

Taking that as an invitation, Twilight awkwardly lifted herself up onto the wall, sitting herself down beside Dash. Neither of them spoke for what felt like forever, until Twilight’s attention fell back on the cigarette.

“You smoke?”

Dash glanced down at the rolled up paper in her hand. “It’s lavender.”

“Not tobacco?”

“Nah. I used to, for a little bit, because my cool uncle did, but Fluttershy started freaking out that I’d get lung cancer and die young, so she made me switch to lavender. Said it would calm me down.”

“You know that smoking is still bad for you, right? Even if it’s lavender.”

“I know. But it puts her mind at ease and, well, I guess it smells better.”

They fell back into silence, the only voice between them belonging to the lull of the river.

“So…are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Okay?” Twilight reiterated.

Dash hummed, then leaned back against the wall. “Do you?”

“Do I…what?”

“Care?”

“I mean…”

“Or are you just here because I skipped your stupid chess lesson?”

Pursing her lips, Twilight thought about her answer. “I’m here, aren’t I? And I’m not… yelling at you for skipping.”

“Wow, I’m so touched by your sacrifice, egghead.”

Twilight weakly punched Dash’s arm, as she’d seen Dash do to others.

“Argh! I’m wounded!”

“There’s no way that hurt!”

“Owie! I’m bleeding out! Someone call the doctor!”

“When I get my doctorate, I’m diagnosing you formally with Idiot Syndrome.”

This caused Dash to fall silent again, and she lifted her knees to her chest. Twilight was hit with the sense that she’d touched upon a nerve.

That scarcely made sense; Twilight had insulted Dash’s intelligence on a number of occasions, and it had never seemed to offend her before. What was different about today?

The lack of any sort of conversation was starting to turn awkward, and Twilight was about to wonder if she should perhaps leave her begrudging mentor to her own miserable devices, when Dash lifted her head.

“Did you bring your chess set?”

Twilight remembered she was still wearing her school backpack. “I did. Why?”

“Well, get it out, then. Might as well get some practice in.”

“Really? Now?”

“Yeah. Consider it on me. Don’t have to pay me or nothing.”

And so, they played a few games, the board set up between them on the concrete wall, sun slowly migrating towards the horizon like an egg yolk on a lopsided piece of toast.

Dash only chimed in occasionally, giving (ironically) the most useful advice she’d given to date, absent of any of her usual taunts and jeers. She even praised three of Twilight’s moves.

Finally, when it got too dark to focus properly on where the pieces were going, Dash kicked Twilight’s king over with her index finger.

“My parents found my report card today.”

“The one from last week?”

“Yeah.”

“I take it… it wasn’t great?”

“No, really? I’m out here moping because they were so proud and it was so good! They’re buying me a car as a reward. Proudest parents this side of the state.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a bad grade,” Twilight said, but the words sounded hollow even to her own ears.

“Seriously? Is there even the slightest part of you that agrees with that statement? I’m pretty sure it was you who shed physical tears that time she got an A minus on a chemistry test.”

Twilight blushed. “You… saw that?”

Dash rolled her eyes, so she tried again.

“I didn’t think you cared about grades. It’s not like you try. They’re clearly enough for you to stay on your teams, and you somehow managed to get into AP classes, didn’t you?”

Rainbow curled herself back up into a ball. “I do try,” she mumbled, somewhat indignant. “And the placement tests are… different.”

“If you gave it your best and it’s still enough for the-”

“They got worse. I’m failing like, four subjects. My parents are… they’re the most supportive parents in the world. And they- the way they looked at me. The way my mom sounded. I could tell they were…”

“Disappointed?” Twilight finished.

“Yeah.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

Twilight thought for a moment, then dragged her gaze down towards the water.

“You’re not… stupid, you know.”

“Does my brain know that?”

“You can’t be stupid if you manage to be this good at chess.”

“Chess is easy!” Dash cried, throwing her hands up into the air suddenly. “It’s all predicting moves. It’s easy once you learn the rules and remember it’s just a game. It’s a tiny little box where the pieces have only a certain way to move, and the strategy just… it just makes sense.

“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, and it’s always been easy. I could always be the best. But studying? It’s all reading boring shit that I just can’t-” she huffed. “I just can’t get it to stick.”

“...Maybe I could help?”

Twilight was met with a pair of narrowed pink eyes.

“You’d help me?”

“You’re helping me.”

“For a price.”

“We could… call it a quid pro quo.”

“Eh?”

“Something for something. I tutor you, you tutor me.”

The dejected shell formerly known as Rainbow Dash mulled over the words, looking back down at the board, as if the pieces were doing anything more interesting than just sitting there.

“Just… think about it. Any time you want, you can… call me, and I’ll see if I have the time for a session.”

“...Maybe.”

The silence returned, and Dash suddenly sat up, looking at the brightly lit streetlamps standing stark against the darkness around them.

“Shit, what time is it?”

“Uh… 8pm.”

“You don’t have a curfew?”

Somewhat sheepishly, Twilight started to put away the chessboard. “I don’t think my parents ever thought I needed one.”

“God, you’re such a repressed nerd.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“I’m like this by choice.”

“That makes it even worse,” Dash countered, tossing the king she’d been fiddling with back into the box as Twilight clamped the lid shut.

“You live far from here?”

“The…uh… last bus left 25 minutes ago.”

Dash shook her head. “For a literal genius you sure can be pretty dumb.”

She hopped off the wall before Twilight could say anything else.

“Come on, I’ll give you a lift. Just tell me where to go, stalker.”

“...I would like that. Thank you.”

Author's Note

Thank you so much to everyone who commented! I honestly had the biggest jolt of happiness from reading them; they made my day!

I didn't really expect anyone to be too interested in this fic, it's just a silly idea I had whilst playing chess. I am cursed to forever conjoin my favorite subjects and BAM! Chess Sweats was born.

The arcs in this story will be entirely character-driven, with heavy focuses on emotional plots, with the beautiful sport of chess being the driving force behind the blossoming relationship between the two main leads. That was... kind of a cheesy way to phrase it, huh?

Stress Test

Twilight was not having a good day. Recently, it felt like none of her days were really going all that well.

She didn't know what was wrong with her. There was definitely something wrong with her.

Leaving the cafeteria, on her way to her weekly session in Cadence's office, she analyzed the tremor in the hand currently holding her fifth cup of coffee that day.

Caffeine was good for you. To an extent.

It was a well-documented fact that it had acute cognitive benefits by activating neural pathways. Occasionally, it was also used for pain-relief, which would be much appreciated, considering the mother of all migraines currently radiating a traumatizing little dance across the inside of Twilight’s skull.

Coffee itself was also rich in antioxidants.

Perhaps she’d developed a slight over-reliance since starting senior year as the frequency of all-night study sessions had gone up. That would explain the tremor.

Or maybe that was caused by the lack of sleep?

The Journal of Sleep Research had countless articles on all the devastating health effects a lack of sleep could pose, which was why Twilight had adopted a polyphasic sleep cycle, tailored to include three 1.5 hour naps (the length of one sleep cycle) to keep her cognition consistent. She wasn’t about to develop sudden heart failure because of something as trivial as failing to maintain a habit that every human ever had a literal biological clock instilled inside them to keep running.

That would be preposterous.

And yet, the polyphasic sleeping had somehow managed to slink back into biphasic, and then… monophasic. Except that singular phase shrunk down to about an hour in the past week.

There was just so much to do! So much to read over and revise. She’d been cramming chess theory so hard her board started to look more like a spiral than a checkerboard and she was starting to forget why it was even so important in the first place.

She couldn’t be this bad at something that was supposed to be the game for smart people. People out there played chess to relax! There were grandmasters barely out of diapers these days, for crying out loud!

Not to mention the ordinary workload she was committed to. Then there was the work she’d put into making a study plan for Rainbow.

Right as she reached Cadence’s office, her phone buzzed.

Featherbrain: egghead im gonna tell you something but you gotta promise you wont get like

Featherbrain: aggressive

Twilight’s eye twitched.

Me: If you’re about to tell me that you’re skipping our study session for the third day in a row I make no promises that I won’t pummel you the next time I see you.

Featherbrain: hehe :P

Featherbrain: good luck finding me. I turned my eqmess map off

Twilight started typing out a barrage of vexed retorts, but somewhere near the third paragraph detailing the importance of consistent study schedules to maintaining adequate grades, the act felt entirely futile. She deleted it dejectedly, then sighed, putting her phone back into her skirt pocket.

Cadence was already sitting at her desk when Twilight entered, two cups of tea positioned next to the potted miniature roses on the surface.

The delicate aroma hit Twilight straight away; lavender Earl Grey. Normally her favorite, but in that moment, the smell of lavender reminded her of a certain someone she didn’t have the bandwidth to be properly mad at.

“Twilight!” Cadence smiled, gesturing to the chair opposite. She waited until the door closed to act out a professionally restrained version of ‘Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake’ from her seat, which Twilight half-heartedly returned as she sat down.

“I certainly don’t remember that being part of the typical school counselor session,” Twilight said, somewhat teasingly.

“Oh hush, it’s tradition!”

“What happened to professionalism, Cadence?”

“In my opinion, a bit of whimsy is just what every counselor needs.”

There was a small moment of quiet, during which Cadence waited for Twilight to take a sip of her tea before she got down to the actual purpose of their session.

Perhaps it would have been a bit awkward having your sister-in-law also mentor you within the school setting, but Twilight was so used to looking up to Cadence in the years she’d known her, that the change in scenery really didn’t change much about their interactions.

Only now, there was the added expectation of taking her advice with a little more severity. And the fact she could technically dish out detentions.

“So… the last time we spoke, you were about to take part in that chess tournament. How did that go?”

Twilight gritted her teeth.

She was about to recount the events of the past week, considering her words, when Cadence’s eyes narrowed to a squint and she leaned forward with a small frown gracing her lips.

“Are you… alright, Twilight? You’re looking a bit… gray.”

“Gray?” Twilight echoed, lifting a hand to her cheek.

“Are you ill?”

“No, no, nothing of the sort. I just didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Ah…” Cadence said. “I thought you were going to work on that? What happened to that schedule you had planned out to get your ‘recommended hours?’”

“It’s in action,” Twilight said, looking off to the side. “I’ve just been… preoccupied lately. I’ve started, uhm… helping someone with their lessons. Or at least planned to.”

“Oh!” Cadence instantly brightened. “You’ve made a friend?”

Twilight stiffened slightly, her fingers tightening around the mug of tea. “No,” she quickly said, somewhat defensively. “She’s not my friend. It’s a simple quid pro quo.”

“Oh, I see. Then what are you getting out of it?”

“She’s teaching me chess in exchange for help with her classes. She’s on a bunch of sports teams, so it’s important she gets her grades up. However… she’s been…” she paused, gnawing at the inside of her cheek as she mulled the next phrase over. “I think she’s been avoiding me.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“I don’t— hey! Don’t therapize me!”

Cadence held her hands up defensively. “It’s my job to check in on how you’re faring! Taking on a tutee can add extra stress to any student, much less someone taking on as much as you.”

“I manage my workload.”

“I know you do, I’m not trying to suggest you’re not capable of anything you set your mind to, Twilight. I’ve known you long enough to know what a strong and determined girl you truly are. But sometimes… you do tend to push yourself at the expense of your health.”

Twilight didn’t say anything to this, but her mouth thinned into a line. The bags under her eyes suddenly felt like they were actively being filled with lead, their weight dragging down into her cheeks. It almost felt like an accusation from her own body, mocking her for being tired.

It was okay. She was okay. Caffeine took about an hour to work. She didn’t have long to wait now.

Cadence looked at her pointedly, then shuffled some papers around. “I have some leaflets around here somewhere about managing school burnout, if that’s something you might be—”

“I’m not burnt out. I’m managing just fine. My grades are the best they could be, I’m regularly getting extra credit in, I’m on my way to getting on the chess team for that daft hobby paragraph on my personal statement, and now I’m even tutoring! I don’t know why you insist on being so worried, because I’m literally the perfect student!

“Teachers pray for students like me!”

It wasn’t until she saw Cadence pull back that Twilight realized she’d started to raise her voice.

There was a heavy, silent beat, before Cadence’s brow furrowed, eyes softening. “Feeling more irritated than you normally would can be a real sign that there are stresses in your life affecting your mental health, Twily.”

Twily. This was her sister-in-law talking now, not her school counselor, which was quickly becoming all too much.

Twilight stood up. “I’m fine, I promise. I wish everyone would quit insisting I’m not handling everything. I don’t bite off more than I can chew.”

“What does Dr Gentle think about all of this?”

“I haven’t seen her in a few weeks. I haven’t needed to.”

“Twilight—”

“I really should be getting to class now. You know I like to get there early,” she said, slinging her backpack back over her shoulders and swaying slightly in the process. She caught Cadence’s concerned look, which made her feel all the more prickly.

As quickly as her legs could carry her, Twilight dashed from the office and headed off down the hall. All of the students milling around her were so much louder than normal, which wasn’t helping the pounding in her head.

For a moment, right before she reached her classroom, the whole world was pounding.

Then she was in her seat and the lesson was about to start, and then everyone else started arriving, and the teacher started talking. Twilight’s head buzzed as she followed every word.

Didn’t it feel like everything was suddenly going all the more slowly than usual? Or all too quick?

She almost forgot how she got there.

It was Biology. She knew biology.

Biology was probably the easiest of the sciences for her to study for. It was all just words, and Twilight could memorize entire blocks of text like no one’s business. That was the east part.

Yet that day, none of the words seemed to come as easily to her as they should have.

Revision was like a melody, flowing between her ears and through her brain, a smooth river down a canal with no kinks. But right then, it was like each word got jammed between her eyes, tripping over the aching grooves of her headache and getting all tangled up into a rapidly unwinding tape. Tangled. Tangled.

She heard a whisper and a laugh from somewhere on her right, and her gaze focused on two students at a desk in front of her.

She saw Rainbow Dash smiling at a girl beside her with long pale pink hair swooping down her back, looking back at the teacher conspiratorially to make sure she hadn’t noticed them talking during his lesson.

Oh yeah. She’s in this class too, Twilight thought vacantly. Then she was angry again, because Dash couldn’t even wait until lessons had concluded to inform Twilight she’d be skipping out on their studying.

Then, she just felt stupid.

Because somewhere, deep, deep down, she had sort of cared.

She certainly didn’t want Dash to be her friend or anything dumb like that. Of course not.

But, well, studies showed that repeated exposure to a previously abhorrent individual could dull you to their annoyance, fostering a sense of tolerance almost like being fond of them.

She had spent hours reworking the curriculum of the classes Dash said she was faring the worst in, focusing extra on the lessons she remembered her particularly lacking in during class. Twilight felt dumb as she noticed how much attention she had been paying. How much time she’d already wasted.

Because unfortunately, she clearly had higher expectations than Dash for their mutually-beneficial partnership.

And that kind of was the stupidest feeling of them all, wasn’t it?

The room started spinning again, and before she realized what she was doing, Twilight had stood up abruptly, drawing all the attention in the room. Two dozen sets of eyes bore into her, including Mr Cranky’s from the front.

“I’m sorry, Miss Sparkle, but was there something you wanted to say?” he asked, crossing his arms.

Twilight opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

The spinning room quickly turned to a spinning hallway, then a spinning girl’s bathroom, then a spinning stall with the door tightly bolted shut.

She brought the seat down and flopped against the cold plastic, clinging her knees to her chest as she inexplicably started to sob.

She covered her face with her sweater sleeves to muffle the sound, but she still sounded pathetic to her own ears.

What was the matter with her?

That was a dumb question. Of course she knew.

The articles detailing the adverse effects of sleep deprivation on your emotional state were clear. A person was more prone to volatile changes in mood when not adequately rested, a fact that for some reason was only making her cry harder.

This was all just the result of brain chemicals. It should be an easy problem with an easy fix. Point A to Point B. There wasn’t anything wrong with her, she just needed a rest.

Yet the magnitude of her problems didn’t seem to shrink at that fact.

She was crying so loud she almost didn’t hear the gentle knock against the stall door.

Twilight hiccuped, raising her head but seeing nothing but fogged up tears blurring her lenses.

“I don’t mean to eavesdrop, darling, but are you alright in there? I can hear you crying.”

“I’m—” Twilight coughed. “I’m okay.”

“Are you…” the voice came again. “Are you quite sure of that?”

Upon not receiving an answer, the person on the other side of the stall clacked away, footsteps hurriedly returning as a pair of purple heels became visible in the gap under the door. A white handkerchief waved over the door.

Twilight stared at it for a moment, before standing up to grab it.

“Thank you…” she sniffled, lifting her glasses to rub at her eyes. At this point, the bags felt so dense that they could have absorbed the fabric.

“If you come out, I would be more than happy to lend an ear to listen to your plight. I don’t bite, dear, I promise.”

Twilight stewed on the offer as she examined the damp handkerchief in her hands. The edge was embroidered and lacy, and it smelled heavily of expensive perfume.

Gingerly, she pushed the door open and looked upon the owner of the kind voice.

It was a girl that looked too old to be a freshman; perhaps belonging to her year, but she wasn’t in any of Twilight’s classes to her knowledge. She was tall and pretty, the very definition of manicured from her blackcurrant curls to her white floral tights and glinting diamond earrings.

This was the very type of girl that she would have expected to look her up and down and chortle.

Yet instead, she smiled encouragingly, and beckoned Twilight over to the sink.

Like a dejected puppy, she followed, barely resisting as the stranger removed her glasses and ran the edge of another handkerchief under the tap, using it to dab cold water over Twilight’s face.

“Oh, you’re all blotchy, you poor thing,” she cooed. “Your visage is positively painted with misery.”

Twilight’s brain was working far too slowly to dwell on the implications of that, or wonder if that was meant to be an insult.

“Oh! I have just the thing, hold on a second.”

Twilight pulled away from the girl’s hands as she started to rifle through a handbag, humming as she extracted a handful of tubes from a second, smaller purse.

She held each one up to the tear-streaked face in front of her, pursing her lips thoughtfully, before deciding on one and putting away the rest.

“Ack! What are you doing?” Twilight protested as the girl tucked her hair behind her ears and opened the tube, about to swipe at her with the brush before being interrupted.

“It’s just a bit of concealer, sweetheart. Trust me, you’ll feel a lot better when you know you’re not parading around looking like you haven’t gotten a wink of sleep in days.”

“But I—”

Her arguments fell on deaf ears as her chin was grabbed in an unexpectedly strong hold and the concealer began its descent towards her eyes. The makeup was icy against her skin, but strangely cooling. She pouted, feebly accepting her fate.

“You know,” the girl mused as she worked. “Haters always ask me, ‘Rarity, why in tarnation are you carrying all that around? It’s as useful as a trapdoor on a canoe!’ But I know that a true lady isn’t prepared for anything if she’s not fit to help any sister out in a makeup catastrophe. It’s lucky you match my contour shade.”

The girl (Rarity, presumably) twittered on about the importance of an adequate supply of various products and a sizable handbag as she worked, capitalizing on Twilight’s sluggish state to sneak in a few swipes of mascara and a dash of highlighter while she was distracted.

When she was done, she replaced Twilight’s glasses and held her hands on either side of the other girl’s arms, turning her towards the mirror and beaming proudly.

“There! You look about twenty times more radiant than when you started! I do impress even myself sometimes.”

Squinting at her reflection, Twilight wrinkled her nose.

She sheepishly turned back to the girl and gave her a strained smile.

“Thanks…” she said weakly.

Her own face staring back at her looked odd. She looked so much cleaner and…put together than she felt, which created a strange sense of misalignment that wasn't entirely unpleasant. It was almost like a mask.

“I guess I do look better.”

“Miles better!” Rarity smiled. “Now, do you want to talk about whatever it was that had you in such a state to begin with? I am a wonderful active listener.”

Twilight contemplated her options.

Rarity was peering at herself thoughtfully in the bathroom mirror as she did so, reapplying eyeliner with an impressively fluid motion. Twilight didn't think she could even write that smoothly with pen on paper.

She didn't seem like she'd empathize all that much with the type of issue Twilight was having, but then again, she did offer kindness to a complete stranger. She was already nicer than anything she could be expected of.

With a deep sigh, Twilight opened her mouth to give a rundown of her problem, but the bathroom door swinging open stopped her in her tracks.

The two girls turned to see a blonde in braids and a stetson marching inside, an unimpressed look on her face.

“I knew I'd find you gussyin’ up in here instead of botherin’ to be on time. As always.”

Twilight was momentarily taken aback, then realized the girl's accusation was clearly being leveled at Rarity, judging by the titter of annoyance that sounded from her direction.

“I had an emergency, if you must know.”

“Oh, yeah? And what was it this time? You get emotional over a pretty purse and need a mascara retouch?”

“Really, Applejack? Do you truly think of me as that frivolous?”

‘Applejack’ merely curled her lip in response.

Upon sensing she wasn't going to get an apology, Rarity rolled her eyes and gestured to Twilight.

“I was helping out a friend, if you must know.”

Seemingly noticing her for the first time since barging in, Applejack looked at Twilight and squinted, leaning too close for comfort.

“Uh huh. And does that ‘emergency’ you were ‘helping’ her with have anything to do with your sparkly stuff she's wearing?”

“Awh, you recognize my highlighter shade?” Rarity cooed, placing both hands on her heart.

“How could I forget it?” Applejack said dryly. “I've had that color brandished at me so many times I see it in my nightmares.”

“I still think you can pull it off even better than me.”

“It’s pink.”

“I've yet to meet a single girl that doesn't utterly blossom in pink. Even you, AJ. Exhibit A, and—” She pointed at Twilight. “Exhibit B. I myself am a given, obviously.”

“Uh…huh… Well, are ya ready to go yet?”

“One moment, dear. My friend here was just about to— Oh! My apologies, I didn't even get your name…?”

“Oh, uhm. It's Twilight.”

“What a wonderful name!” Rarity exclaimed. “You know what, Applejack here and I were about to head out to that new cafe that opened not too far from school. You're welcome to join us if you wish. We can talk more there.”

“Oh…I don't know. I have a lot of work that still needs to be done. And I have…” she trailed off as she realized she had nowhere she really needed to be. Not since Dash canceled.

Rarity pouted. “Oh, are you sure you can't be persuaded? Nothing's more healing than a spot of tea and cake, you know. You certainly seem like you could use some healing.”

Twilight didn’t say anything, merely looked off awkwardly to the side, prompting Applejack to put a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“If she doesn’t wanna come, you shouldn’t-”

“Actually, no, I’ll come.”

“Really?” Rarity brightened, then hooked an arm through Twilight’s, starting to drag her off towards the exit. “Oh! How wonderful.

“Now, tell me, was this about a boy?”

Libraries were illustrious pillars of education in the community, and Twilight loved them to no end, but nothing could truly beat the ambience of studying in the comfort of your own room at night.

The open window by her desk let in a cool, gentle breeze that thankfully wasn’t intrusive enough to scatter her papers, only providing a welcome chill to her overheating mind.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed, finding that, despite the enjoyment of reading something in the joint glow of the moonlight and her desk lamp, her eyes were starting to hurt and that was slowing down her efficiency.

Nonetheless, she couldn’t stop now. She had a fair bit to work through to pay for the delay incurred by visiting the cafe with Rarity and Applejack.

She didn’t know what even possessed her to say yes in the first place. Maybe it was just the fact that she was fragile and lonely and Rarity had been so nice to her. She couldn’t really understand why she had been; she didn’t even know Twilight and yet had extended such generosity.

Applejack seemed nice enough too. They both seemed like such good friends that Twilight felt like a bit of a third wheel at times, but surprisingly, she still had… a good time. It kind of reminded her of what chess with Rainbow Dash felt like.

Twilight gripped her pencil tighter and groaned.

Why couldn’t she stop thinking about her?

No. She was focused. She was focused!

Twilight leaned back over her notes and started to scribble down a summary of the block of text she’d just gone over from the study guide, when she was brought back from her thoughts by a thud against her window.

She looked up, first seeing only the curtains billowing a bit more intensely than before. Then, the next thing she knew, she was standing up and letting out a yelp as a face appeared on her window sill.

“What the-” she shrieked, a flurry of scenarios of getting kidnapped or murdered in her own home playing out in her head when the face morphed into an entire girl hopping into her room and clamping a hand over her mouth.

“Shut up! God, do you want to wake your whole house?”

Twilight slapped the hand away. “Rainbow Dash? What the hell do you think you’re doing!?”

“Breaking and entering, duh.”

“How did you— Why are you— Just what do you think you’re doing!?”

Dash retreated from Twilight, momentarily casting her gaze down, before sheepishly looking back up at Twilight.

“You left sixth period kinda… frazzled. And you weren’t answering my texts so…”

“So you thought you’d break into my room at—” Twilight glanced at her bedside alarm clock. “One in the morning?”

“...Yes?”

“Are you insane? Like, clinically? Are you clinically insane? Have those soccer balls bouncing off your head completely fried every useful neuronal connection you may have had?”

“Well that’s not very nice, is it?”

“I’m not joking!”

“Sorry.”

“And I didn’t answer your texts because…” Twilight crossed her arms. “Well, why should I?”

“Well, because we’re, you know. Somewhat, uh…”

“Somewhat what?”

“I had to check you were okay and everything.”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I think that was the first time I’d ever seen you leave a lesson early. You looked in really… rough shape. Like a tornado victim.”

“Gee, thanks. Just what every girl wants to hear. I’m fine, thank you very much. Now, get out!”

“Then Applejack mentioned she—”

“You’re friends with Applejack?”

“Yeah. Well, she’s friends with Fluttershy, so I kinda have to be chill with her. I get the feeling she doesn’t like me much. Thinks I’m annoying.”

“Wow. I can hardly imagine why!”

“Is your default setting sarcasm or is that just something that happens to repressed nerds after a while?”

Twilight didn’t dignify that with a response.

“Look, I, uh… brought you something.”

Dash started rooting through her backpack, before extracting an apple and handing it to Twilight.

“An… apple?”

“Yeah, that’s what you give to teachers, right?”

“Need I remind you that you haven’t bothered to show up to a single one of our study sessions?”

“Yeah. I know. I’m… sorry. Turn the apple over.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes at the other girl, but did so, revealing a crudely carved frowning face in the apple’s red skin, white flesh spelling out the word sorry.

“Right. And what is this supposed to represent, exactly?”

She looked up to see Dash was pulling a matching expression to the apple.

Twilight gritted her teeth, then strode over to her school backpack and aggressively ripped it open, shoving her hand in and yanking out a thick wad of stapled notes.

She slammed it down on her desk.

“What's that?” Dash asked.

“This is the study plan I made for you,” Twilight snapped. “That I spent hours on.”

With the backpack still held in her hands, she pulled out another notebook and a chess strategy manual, depositing them on the desk with similar momentum. Then, she moved three more books from the side of her desk onto the pile, and another two from her bedside.

“And these are the notes I've been taking and books I've been reading on stupid chess study that I've had to do alone these last few days because your sorry—” she squeaked angrily. “Your sorry ass couldn't be bothered to show up!”

Dash looked away, and crossed her arms, not saying anything.

“Well? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“I know that I'm not….urgh,” Dash frowned. “I know I kind of screwed you over and…Jeez. I didn't think you'd… I didn't think you'd put so much time into…helping me. I guess…why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’d you spend all that time making a guide to help me? Especially after I bailed on you?”

“Because!” Twilight exclaimed, lifting her hands from her sides. “Because…I don't know why. Maybe because I… I don't know. I thought…” she trailed off, and million thoughts rushed through her head but none of them managed to make it to her lips.

Dash looked at her awkwardly. “I didn't just come to give you a stupid apple. I also came to say…I spoke to my dad, because I couldn't really figure out how to…

“Okay, so I'm obviously the best at everything. Well, almost everything. I couldn't figure out how to help you with chess because your brain works so much differently to mine. Studying comes easy to you so I couldn't teach you the same way I learn and—”

“Well you're clearly not good at learning considering you're borderline failing most of your classes,” Twilight interjected bitterly.

Dash flinched. “Okay, okay, I deserve that. I'll let that one slide.”

There was a pause, and Twilight motioned for Dash to continue.

“Right, right. So, I talked to my dad and he gave me some pointers, since he's mentored a bunch of other players and I…think I know how to train your strategy.”

“How? The tournament is literally two days away.”

“We don't need you to be the best right away, just good enough to beat the majority.”

“Okay…and?”

“Come to my house tomorrow. For a sleepover. My dad will be there after he's done with work and he can help too.”

“Woah, woah, woah…” The gears in Twilight's mind churned, anger evaporating momentarily. “Are you seriously telling me that the Grandmaster Bow Hothoof is going to be helping me study chess!?”

“I mean, duh. He's my dad. It's not like I gotta get on a waitlist first.”

“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh—”

“I should have asked him for help sooner. I was just avoiding him because of my report—”

“Shut up! Oh my gosh!” Twilight darted forward to shake Dash. “I'm going to meet a real actual grandmaster!”

Dash started to smile. “Wow, this position feels familiar. I'm getting a flashback.”

Getting a hold of herself, Twilight sheepishly let go of Dash, but didn't stop vibrating excitedly.

“So… am I forgiven?”

“Ahh! I'm so nervous! I need to start studying up right away!”

Dash laughed, bringing Twilight back to earth. She fixed the other girl with a firm expression.

She had gone through a roller coaster of emotions that day, all of them somehow circling back to Rainbow Dash.

Rage. Abandonment. Anger. Vulnerability. Anger.

She looked down.

“...Why do you care if I forgive you or not?”

Suddenly, Dash was very fixated on staring at Twilight's wall.

“Because…you know, we're sorta friends. Aren't we?”

“Are we?”

“Well it's not like there's a real criteria. I like hanging out with you. Even if it just pummeling you at chess.”

“Okay, we don't need to—”

“And I mean absolutely demolishing—”

“Do you want me to start throwing books at your head?”

Dash defensively held her hands up and laughed. “Okay, okay. I get it. Last one, I promise.”

Twilight thought for a moment. “You really…like spending time with me?”

If it hadn't been so dark and her mind so slow from sleep deprivation, Twilight might have thought that Dash was blushing.

“You don't need to repeat it like that, damn. All…sappy ‘n shit.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “That's what you consider sappy? I've seen how Pinkie Pie acts, that surely isn't the worst display of emotions you've encountered.”

“You think Pinkie’s a wild ride? Wait ‘till you meet Flutters. She cries at literally every emotional moment in movies, it's not even funny. She shed tears during Space Jam.”

“I've never seen it.”

Dash’s eyes shot open like saucers. “You've never seen Space Jam? What rock do you live under?”

“I don't really watch many movies…”

“Okay, well, that's gonna change.”

They lapsed back into silence, and Twilight started to smile slightly.

“Okay…I forgive you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So…tomorrow at my house, okay? I'll come pick you up.”

“On your motorbike? Absolutely not—”

“You were fine the first time!”

“You drive like a maniac! I had to hold onto you for dear life because you swerve like you're driving down a slip ‘n slide!”

“Don't blame my driving. The ladies all cling to the Dashinator.”

“It was out of necessity!”

“Sure held on tight for a measly 20 miles per hour.”

“You're so irritating.”

“Still clung to me like a damsel though—”

“I'll walk, thanks,” Twilight said dryly, though her face felt slightly warm at the accusation.

The smirk on Dash's face was making her annoyance bubble up again hotly.

“Okay, I promise to drive slow,” she said as she started making her way back to the windowsill. She swung her legs over, then turned back to Twilight

“...Fine. If you're careful.”

Rainbow grinned, then started to scale back out of the window, when Twilight stopped her.

Dash looked up questioningly.

“Though you know, with your insistence on driving me, maybe it's you that wants me clinging.”

With that, she shut the window, not giving Rainbow a chance to retort.

The image of her shocked face would keep Twilight giggling until she went to bed that night.

Author's Note

I'm sorry this chapter took so long to get out! I've been working and reworking my outline to get some form of cohesive narrative, because pacing in stories is something I'm always so unsure of. I think I need to settle with the knowledge that it's never going to perfect and that the stakes for my MLP fanfiction aren't truly that high. My computer broke down as I was writing this, too, which put quite the delay.

I'm really excited to get into more of the Mane 6 dynamics! I like to think they all have some form of connection to each other already, even just as acquaintances, and I can't wait to start writing more interactions between their friend group. Next chapter we have a sleepover!

Ambush

Nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Twilight contemplated ringing the doorbell again.

This…was the right house, right? Her sleep-deprived brain hadn't misled her down some stranger's street, had it?

She checked the address that Dash had sent for the fifth time, glancing again at the gilded number nailed into the wooden red door.

Before she could pull up Dash's contact to call her, the door swung open and Twilight was met with a grinning (albeit slightly out of breath) face.

“Twi! Hey, sorry for the wait, I was setting up snacks upstairs. Get in.”

Before she could say anything, she was yanked over the threshold.

She started taking her shoes off, before it finally registered what Dash had called her.

“Twi?”

“The gas station was out of nutritional paste or whatever it is nerds eat, so I got a mix of stuff because I don't know what you like.”

“I get a nickname?”

“Huh? Oh— what, does it bother you?”

“No, no! I didn't say that,” Twilight quickly said, flapping a hand. “It’s just that your names for me are usually…”

Dash started to climb the stairs, but turned around to flash Twilight and amused look.

“Nerd? Egghead? Poindexter? Nerdtron Prime? Bighead Boots the First? Massive-Brain-in-the-Ass? Queen of—”

“I get it! I get it!”

Dash laughed, and though she fixed her with a pointed glare in retort, Twilight couldn't muster up much spite in the act.

Recently, she was starting to find that she kind of liked it when Dash laughed.

It was a raspy sound, but it had a melody to it. Like an electric guitar. It was…fizzy. She laughed like that even when Twilight was mean to her back.

It was an odd dynamic.

“So…you coming? My room's just up here.”

Twilight shook herself from her thoughts and followed. As she did so, she couldn't help looking around.

There were a lot of photos of Dash on the walls. She was clearly loved here, or, at the very least, had her achievements prized.

It wasn't hard to see where she got her ego from.

“Your house is…nice,” she remarked, lagging behind slightly as she appraised a framed photo of a child Rainbow Dash being hoisted atop an older man's shoulders, beaming as brightly as the shine on the trophy she held above her head.

“Urgh, stop looking at those!” Dash cringed, covering the photo with her hands. “My parents are the worst.”

Twilight snorted. “Why, because they're proud of you?”

“Of course not, I'm the goddamn greatest!”

“Then why?”

“Because they're soooooo embarrassing!”

Twilight batted away Dash’s hand to look at the photo again.

“Is that your dad?”

“The one and only. Oh! He said he'd call me when he's off work. So until then, you're stuck with just me. Now hurry your scrawny ass up and stop gawking at the pictures!”

She jogged the rest of the way up and Twilight followed, finally reaching Dash’s bedroom.

Twilight didn't know what she'd been expecting, but this certainly wasn't it.

Rainbow flopped down on a large double bed or, actually, was that a California king?

The walls were painted a pale blue, decked out with rainbow-streaked banners and a myriad of posters toting various video games characters, movies and some kind of sports team called the Wonderbolts.

The lights were partially obscured by fake clouds attached to the ceiling, with colorful paper stars suspended on sparkly strings. It was strangely artistic, casting the room in a bluish glow that reflected prettily off a windchime decorated with glass beads.

If Twilight hadn't noticed the basketball net hung up above a laundry basket, the ceiling alone could have convinced her the room belonged to some kind of Pinterest girl.

“Your room is…really…” Twilight started, looking around.

“Totally radical?”

“Actually, yeah,” she hummed, distractedly analyzing every poster in turn.

When she looked back at Rainbow, she saw her looking back at her with a smile on her face.

“What?”

“Nothing. You're just weirdly cute when you're not in angsty nerd mode.”

Twilight let out an affronted noise as she sat down on the bed next to her. “I am not an angsty nerd.”

“You totally are,” Dash snorted, sitting up and poking Twilight on the forehead, unphased when she received a smack in response.

“If anyone's angsty, it's you,” Twilight smirked, jerking her head at a My Chemical Romance poster.

“Hey! I have layers.”

“Like an onion.”

“Like a planet.”

“Because your brain is smooth and round?”

“Nah. ‘Cos I'm hot like a molten core, baby,” Dash said, flicking up two fingers guns.

“Urgh, now that's embarrassing behavior,” Twilight laughed, reaching over to her backpack to pull out her books. “Now, shall we start on chess or your study first? Have you had a chance to look at the plan I made for you?”

“Woah, that's a hefty stack,” Dash grimaced. “You planning on clobbering me with those?”

“Only if you get a question wrong.”

“There's gonna be questions? If you’re planning a pop quiz just do me a favor and put me out of my misery now.”

“I guess that's a no on looking at the plan, then. I clearly laid out the end-of-topic tests,” Twilight said, slightly irritated.

“Of course you did. And I did look at the plan, actually!”

Dash reached over to her bedside table to grab a stack of paper.

“See? I read it last night. I even highlighted and all that nerdy crap.”

The initial annoyance quickly dissipated, replaced by a quiet surprise. It was replaced with bemusement when she saw that only the first page had ink on it.

“Okay, I started highlighting,” Dash said sheepishly.

They decided to begin with Biology.

About an hour went by of painstaking study, during which Dash let out a groan of frustration and/or boredom roughly every four minutes or so.

Tutoring someone like Rainbow was an experience that Twilight could only compare to what she assumed it must be like to pull teeth, one by one, out of the mouth of a living, screaming victim.

She managed to get distracted by just about everything, fiddling with pens, doodling in the margins of her notes, and even folding a diagram of a neuron into a paper swan when Twilight was busy explaining the dopaminergic pathways.

She glanced over at the crude drawing Dash had started and grimaced.

“What…is that?”

“That is Trixie Lulamoon being launched from a trebuchet into a volcano. See, that's me and the Wonderbolts throwing a party at the base.”

“How…creative.”

“Can we take a break already? It's been like, hours.”

“It's been…” Twilight checked her phone. “Fifty seven minutes.”

“Urgh.”

“Fine, I suppose a break can't hurt. I can only stomach you finding just about any excuse to get distracted for so long before I start to question my life choices.

“When's your dad due off work?”

Dash picked up her phone and rolled over onto her stomach, crushing Twilight's textbook in the process.

“Uh…nothing yet. His hours are weird. On-call paramedic and all.”

“Your dad's a paramedic?”

“Yeah. Why? That surprising?”

“A bit. I wouldn't have thought that a grandmaster would… go for a job like that.”

“I mean, he was a medic in the army. That's actually where he first learned to play. When he left he started to play in tournaments, climbed the ranks, wrote books, yadda yadda. I guess he missed the action or something.”

“Interesting…” Twilight hummed thoughtfully.

There was a moment of silence, after which Dash rolled over on her back and stared up at Twilight.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Of course I am. Why?”

“I dunno. You just look kinda… tired. Maybe you could use a break.”

“I'm fine. I just haven't been sleeping well lately.”

“Dude, you look like you haven't been sleeping at all.”

“Do you know how much time it takes to keep up my level of study? There's the normal lessons, going over those lessons, reading ahead, extra credits, chess, extra—”

“Extra headache. Jeez. Do you have any time to relax?”

“I'm getting really sick and tired of everyone being so concerned about my stress levels and sleep! If one more person tells me to-”

“Chill, Twi. I'm not your mom.”

Twilight huffed.

Dash seemed to consider something for a moment, before her face broke out in a grin and she picked up her phone.

Twilight was initially uninterested, opting to go over the next block of revision she had planned, until the device held in Dash’s hands started going off with a profuse barrage of message notifications.

“Who needs to reach you that badly?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, no one,” Dash answered, but Twilight was starting to feel the oddest sense of foreboding at the conspiratorial look on her face.

Then, Twilight's own phone went off. Checking the incoming notification, she frowned.

“Why did…Pinkie Pie just add me on EqMess?”

Suddenly, Dash darted forward and plucked the phone from her hands, tossing it in one smooth arc to a beanbag situated some distance away.

“Hey! What was that for—”

“Let's play chess!” Dash exclaimed. “For a period of approximately half an hour!”

“Approximately. That's a big word for you.”

“The next big word from me will be assault, with a pillow, specifically,if you don't stop being annoying, egghead.”

“What are you up to?”

“Do you wanna play or not? I actually have an idea on how to help you get better.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes at Dash, but the prospect of further training before the tournament was appealing.

Going against her better judgement, Twilight relented, and let Dash get out her chess board.

She couldn’t help but marvel at the board as they lowered themselves to the floor and set it up between them. It was a true masterpiece of woodwork, with evenly polished squares with alternating ivory and black, covered in a sheen of resin with some kind of shimmer embedded.

The real attention-grabbers were the pieces though, of course. They were made of light blue resin, elegant shapes with white clouds swirled throughout. Dash even shut the lights off to demonstrate they were glow-in-the-dark!

Of course she’d have such a flashy set.

“So, what’s your idea?”

Dash grabbed a notebook from her bedside drawer and flicked it open, gesturing for Twilight to keep making moves. She stayed silent as they played, only pausing periodically to scribble something down.

Once the game concluded in a checkmate, obviously to Dash’s win, she ripped the page out and passed it to Twilight.

The girl held it in her hands and squinted at the bright red D+ circled at the top of the page.

“You gave me a D?” she exclaimed, affronted.

“With a plus!”

Twilight muttered out an inaudible insult, this being the first D she’d ever received in her life, as she looked over the rest of the page.

“I annotated every move you made, highlighted the blunders and inaccuracies, and explained how you messed up.”

Twilight tilted her head at Dash, raising an eyebrow.

A bashful expression crossed the other girl’s face as she rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, I thought about how to motivate you, and what you were actually good at. Like, schoolwork and stuff. And I’ve seen you tweak out when you get a 97 instead of 100 in class.

“And chess analysis engines give you accuracy ratings, but I thought you might, I don’t know, benefit from it being in a more familiar format. Like a test.”

“This is actually… you put some actual thought into this, didn’t you?”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised!”

“I guess I just didn’t think that you…” Twilight focused on her capsized king to avoid making eye contact. “Cared that much about if I got it or not.”

Truthfully, part of her thought that Dash revelled to an extent over how much better than Twilight she was at the game and didn’t want to disrupt that balance. She hated herself for it, but another part of her assumed that because it’s what she would have felt if their positions were switched. Superiority is a hard power to give up.

“What? Of course I care. It’s just hard to relate to how you learn, since everything comes so easy to you. Apart from chess, apparently.”

“This is… really thoughtful, Dash. Oddly insightful.”

She looked over the page and thought back to her previous moves. Memorising them was the simple part, and in retrospect, she kicked herself for the obvious mistakes she’d been making all along.

“Let’s play again,” she announced, and Dash grinned.

For the next three games they played, Dash delivered a report, with a grade at the top. She cheered every time Twilight corrected a bad habit she kept falling into, and as cheesy as her hollering and encouragement was, it felt oddly good.

They were about to start another game, when the doorbell rang.

“Who could that be at this hour?” Twilight asked, glancing at the bedroom door as Dash got up.

Then, she saw the grin on her face, and the sense of foreboding returned tenfold.

“Oh, just the Party Squad.”

“The what?”

Dash grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet, dragging her all the way downstairs before releasing her to throw open the door.

Twilight looked on in horror as a pink hurricane emerged from a swell of balloons, tossing confetti as it tackled Dash with speed that should be impossible for a human to achieve.

“Did someone order the best slumber party in the entire history of slumber parties!?”

Dash caught her friend and winced as a balloon hit her in the face. “Pinkie, I said cool and lowkey. What about the entire party store screams cool and lowkey to you?”

“She said she needed to grab one thing, we swear. She was only unsupervised for a minute!” another voice chimed from the doorway.

Twilight’s horror only grew as she watched an entire crowd swarm into Rainbow’s house. The voice came from a girl with red and orange streaked hair she didn’t recognise, accompanied by Fluttershy, who Twilight knew from her classes. To her further surprise, Rarity and Applejack, her two new acquaintances from her latest restroom crying session, were there too. They were all clutching duffel bags and rucksacks, with Pinkie’s bags bulging threateningly at the door.

“Dash, what’s going on?” Twilight asked through gritted teeth, dodging Pinkie Pie as she tried to make a lunge at her for a hug too.

Dash, thankfully, picked Pinkie up by her waist, hauling her away as she shot Twilight an unapologetic smile. She wasn’t even pretending to be abashed!

“Listen, Twi. You look like you seriously need to kick back and relax a little. And I thought to myself, since you’re sleeping over already and—”

“I agreed to studying, not… not a wild midnight shindig!”

“Oh, Rainbow… you didn’t tell her we were coming?” Fluttershy whispered at Dash’s side, so quiet that her voice was almost entirely drowned out by Pinkie’s squealing. She was eyeing Twilight so nervously you’d think she was afraid of being bitten.

“Well, that’s just great. No wonder the poor sugarcube looks like we ambushed her,” Applejack said, cuffing Dash over the back of her head.

“Ow! Just look at her! The nerd could use some actual fun!”

“I brought my ka-a-a-a-araoke machiiiiiine!” Pinkie sang. “And face masks, and Monopoly, and Monopoly Deal, and Uno, and cookies, and—”

She was silenced when Rarity clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Darling, I love you, but I don’t think you’re helping.”

“Dash, can I speak to you in private?”

Finally looking like she gained some humility, Dash dipped her head and nodded, taking Twilight around the hall to a spacious kitchen.

When they were alone, Twilight rounded on her.

“I was prepared for a quiet night of getting some actual work done, Rainbow Dash, not—”

“Oh damn, pulling out the government name and everything. Are you mad at me?”

“Of course I’m mad at you! You dropped this on me completely unprepared!”

Dash scowled, but eventually let out a slight sigh when she caught Twilight’s twitching eye and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Look, I don’t actually know for sure that my dad’s even gonna get back to tonight. There’s been some pile-up on the highway and my mom’s out on some spa retreat, and you seriously need to loosen up a little.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to mother me? Huh? What happened to that?”

“Okay, okay, I admit, maybe inviting them here without asking you first was a bit of a dick move…”

“A bit?!”

“But in my defence I only invited Pinkie and Fluttershy! I didn’t know they were gonna grab the extended friend group.”

“Uh huh,” Twilight hissed, unimpressed. “I’m going home.”

“No, wait, Twi!” Dash grabbed her arm. “It’s not— Okay, I know I went about it wrong, but… hearing you talk about everything you had going on, I mean, jeez, just listening made my head hurt. And when I came over in the middle of the night, you were still studying even then. And, well, you like hanging out with me, right?”

“I’m starting to reconsider ever speaking to you again, you…you… blaggard!”

“...Blaggard?”

“Like a scoundrel, but worse!”

“Wow, you’re so mad you’re turning into a pirate.”

“I’m serious, here, Dash!”

Rainbow pouted, then rolled her eyes. “Fine, you don’t have to stay. I know that there’s all sorts of research to suggest spending too much time in social settings is like, really bad for your brain ‘n all.”

“Actually, research suggests that socializing strengthens neural connections and improves attention and memory.”

“Hah! I got you! I knew that because when I play Sims 3, they get cranky when their social need goes down!”

Damn her!

“I tricked you with a classic egghead trap. You can’t resist correcting me. Now you can’t say no, ‘cos it’s good for your brain bits to leave your hovel and socialize and you know it.”

Twilight crossed her arms, thinking deeply. Then, she let out a strained noise of annoyance.

“Grr, fine! But if anything happens that I don’t like, I'm taking a cab home! You’re so lucky you’re my only chess tutor.”

Dash let out an uncharacteristically high-pitched noise and scooped Twilight up in a hug.

“That’s the spirit!”

“Put me down!”

“Oops, my bad,” Dash said, then backed away. Twilight glared at her, before her gaze was pulled back to the kitchen doorway by someone clearing their throat.

“Uh, Pinkie’s setting up her karaoke machine in your living room. She’s starting to unplug stuff and—”

“Oh, shit!” Dash sped off, leaving Twilight alone with the girl she hadn’t recognised before.

Slightly awkwardly, the girl cleared her throat.

“Uh, hi. I’ve seen you around but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.” She extended a hand. “I’m Sunset Shimmer.”

Twilight pursed her lips, but dutifully shook her hand.

“I’m—”

“Twilight Sparkle. I know. Rainbow won’t shut up about you,” Sunset said, rolling her eyes with a smirk. “Sorry about the whole… uh, ambushing you thing. I take it you’re not one for parties?”

“Not… quite.”

“Well, I promise we won't bite! Actually, Rarity might if you rip a silk scarf. Learned that one the hard way.”

“I… really?”

Sunset fluttered her hands in the imitation of a spooky gesture, then started to leave the kitchen.

“Fashion girls go crazy. You never know. Now, come on, we need to make sure Pinkie doesn’t set another speaker on fire.”

The slumber party began with an arbitrary setting-up of a pillow fort, which Pinkie insisted was necessary for Twilight’s first actual slumber party. She’d tried to argue that sleepovers with Cadence counted, but everyone shot her such a pitiful look that she backed down without much protest.

The couch functioned as a foundation, with dining chairs set up on either side to hold up a thick roof constructed from every blanket they could find. Dash’s hefty hoard of pillows was dragged downstairs with all the manpower they had, arranged into cushy walls and seating.

Despite Dash’s insistence in front of Twilight that they didn’t exist, Fluttershy and Pinkie dived into her closet to pull out a small squad of stuffed animals that were apparently necessary guests. Twilight had held a plush bunny up at her, a temporary smugness that lasted all the way up until Dash yanked it from her grip and bopped her over the head with it, her face bright red.

The snacks Rainbow had upstairs were brought down too, as well as apparently the entire snack aisle from Pinkie’s backpack.

“Let’s play Monopoly first,” Sunset said, which earned a small snort from Rarity.

“With this power-hungry landlord?” she said, jerking her head at Applejack. “Absolutely not.”

“What?” Applejack exclaimed, affronted. “I’m perfectly normal during Monopoly!”

“I don’t like the person you become when you have the power to charge me rent.”

“I ain’t ever play the game like how it ain’t meant to be played.”

“Monopoly Deal, then?” Fluttershy meekly offered. “The games don’t last as long so…”

“No time to get too heated,” Sunset finished helpfully.

This turned out to be a very wrong assessment.

Twilight had played Monopoly with her brother and Cadence before, many years ago, and she knew the game’s reputation as breaking apart families but the card game alternative was new territory for her.

She could never have predicted that, with the cards spread out between them, the girls around her would become rabid animals.

She quickly grasped that there were two cards capable of shattering friendships; the Dealbreaker (a card that granted the wielder the ability to steal an entire set of properties from another) and the ‘Just Say No’ card (which could cancel out any action played against the holder, such as the Dealbreaker or any other property-stealing cards).

With two decks in play to account for their group size, all it took was an unlucky deal for things to descend into madness.

Dash slammed down the purple Dealbreaker and reached a triumphant hand over to Applejack’s completed blue set.

“Up-pup-pup, not so fast, sugar pea,” Applejack grinned. “I say no.”

Dash pretended to look momentarily shocked, batting her eyelashes as if she hadn’t seen that coming. “Oh no! My plans have been foiled! Or… that’s what I would say, if I didn’t have…” she wiggled her eyebrows, then played a second purple card. “Another dealbreaker!”

Applejack stared at the card, her shit-eating grin unphased. Seeing her lack of irritation, Dash narrowed her eyes.

“I say no.”

“You can’t say no, I just played another—”

“I say no!” she repeated, then produced another blue card.

“Oh, ho ho ho…” Dash cackled. “You’ve really forced my hand now!” she exclaimed, then produced a third purple soldier to go after Applejack’s precious properties.

Her triumph lasted all of three seconds, before the stack of activated cards received another Just Say No from Applejack’s hand.

“Fine! Then I play a Sly Deal and I’ll take one of your greens!”

“Ya can’t do that! You can only play three cards during your turn!”

“Nuh uh, ‘cos the Just Say No resets the count.”

“Like hell it does!”

“It does!”

“I’m checking the darned rule card—”

Applejack reached for the aforementioned rule cards but didn’t get very far, because Dash lunged for them after a panicked look crossed her face and proceeded to stuff them in Pinkie’s mouth.

“Pinkie, don’t—!” Applejack shrieked, but it was too late. Pinkie chewed and swallowed with a solid gulp. “Pinkamena Diane Pie!”

The squabbling degenerated until Dash and Applejack started setting terms for taking their disagreement outside. Thankfully before it could escalate, someone got the bright (and obvious, but Twilight was far too new to the group to feel comfortable voicing her opinion in the troglodyte screaming match) idea to simply look up the rules online, and peace was restored, albeit to Dash’s audible annoyance.

It didn’t last long, however, because Fluttershy meekly played the final Dealbreaker, stole Applejack’s blue set, and won the game.

After that, the activities continued.

They played a round of Risk and somewhere halfway through, Twilight started to join in with the arguing, surprising herself when she found that same sort of amusement in the act as when she exchanged digs with Rainbow.

Next, they moved onto ‘pampering’ as insisted upon by Rarity.

Dash and Applejack conveniently tried to excuse themselves to the bathroom at the same time, but Rarity was clearly experienced to this ruse and shot them daggers so intense that any more spite behind them and they’d stab through into the physical plane.

Twilight didn’t really know what ‘pampering’ would entail, but her aversion to the concept skyrocketed when Rarity extracted seven sets of face masks, hand masks, foot masks, and pre-sliced cucumbers, as well as a UV lamp and what had to be an entire salon’s worth of nail polish.

After a puny effort to claim she’d forgotten something upstairs that she really needed was quickly shot down by Dash (“If I don’t get to avoid this, neither do you, egghead!”), Twilight was left examining a fresh set of sparkly purple nails and unwillingly admitting that she felt kind of… pretty.

Then, they baked cookies in Dash’s kitchen and played another round of Uno to delegate clean-up duty.

Pinkie Pie, for all her messiness, was blessed by some supernatural baking ability. The batter just by itself was the best dessert Twilight had ever tasted, and a task she’d previously declared entirely unnecessary (anything involving lengthy cooking processes) was made oddly enjoyable by laughing and joking and just talking with the people around her.

Then, it was time to retreat to the pillow fort in front of the TV.

Dash handed Twilight the remote and smirked.

“You’ve survived this long, so… just don’t put on something too geeky.”

Twilight scrolled through the options on all three streaming services at her disposal, listening to the various entertainment opinions being freely tossed around from the backseat commentary around her.

“We’re not watching any of the Buddies films, Fluttershy.”

“But the little puppies are so cute…”

“You cry at anything with a dog in the cast!” Dash said. “Those are meant to be comedies, too!”

“She cries at anything with an animal in it, and I think being so in-touch with your emotions is a darling trait. Don’t listen to that brute, Fluttershy!” Rarity said, placing a hand on Fluttershy’s head, which the other girl rested on her shoulder with a smile.

“They made movies of the Daring Do books?” Twilight asked, pausing her scrolling to hover over the live action image of the titular character clutching a sapphire statue as she hung from a rope above an alligator’s open maw, just like on the cover of the first novel.

“Oh no, now you’ve got her started…” Sunset groaned.

“Got who—”

Twilight didn’t even have to finish her question to get an answer, which came in the form of a deafening squeal from her side.

“You like Daring Do!?”

Twilight recoiled as Dash leapt over to her, clutching her by the shoulders with a look that could only be described as manic.

“I mean… I’ve read the series,” she started, surprised that Dash of all people liked to read for fun.

Truthfully, she’d devoured the series, cover to cover, several times. Fantasy was one of her guilty pleasures. It technically counted as productivity if she engaged in reading as a leisure activity, since she was still absorbing written content and expanding her vocabulary in the process.

“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh! What’s your favourite book? Mine’s obviously Daring Do and the Abyss of Despair because come on, that’s where the action goes from cool to radical and where Ahuizotl steals the Goggles of Divinity and really becomes a threat when he gains future sight, and—”

Twilight scoffed. “Are you kidding? Abyss of Despair was okay and all but Ahuizotl was already a threat when the reader learns during Rosetta’s chapters in Daring Do and the Treasure of Saddle Madre that his species is capable of regeneration, thus rendering his defeat in the Riddle of the Phoenix moot. The dramatic irony is enough to make Daring Do and the Forgotten Temple the best, purely because we know Daring’s walking straight into his trap!”

“There’s…two of them,” Fluttershy quipped.

They continued to go back and forth until someone eventually cleared their throat and drew their attention back to the TV screen, which had gone into sleep mode because of how long they spent yapping.

Twilight blushed, and after some deliberation, settled on the Daring Do movie, earning her a delighted cheer from Rainbow.

“Was this your plan all along, Rainbow?” Sunset smirked. “Get Twilight to pick Daring Do to get around the ‘Dash is banned from making us rewatch any of A.K. Yearling’s works’ rule.”

“No, she made the choice naturally. It’s not my fault Twi’s the only other one with taste in this damn house!”

As they sat back to watch the movie, Twilight realized she’d been smiling an awful lot throughout the night so far, and she kind of didn’t hate that. She hadn’t thought of studying for longer than she could remember.

Several movies and a handful of sitcom episodes later, people started to nod off and it was decided they should all probably get some shut-eye.

Everyone curled up in sleeping bags and duvets and pillows, said good night, and the lights went off.

Despite the fun she’d surprisingly had, in the darkness, Twilight’s unease returned.

Applejack and Pinkie snored some distance away from her, but that wasn’t what was keeping her up.

She could admit that spending some time doing something meaninglessly enjoyable was good for her.

She felt better.

But she couldn’t sleep.

She counted sheep, tried progressive muscle relaxation, struggled to empty her mind; she went the full nine yards.

In the blackness of the living room, behind the even darker nothingness under her eyelids, Twilight’s mind came alive with worries about the chess tournament.

She was making progress, sure, but was it enough?

She started to think about her study plan, unable to put aside the itching thought that she was now slightly behind at being ahead, which was basically the same thing as being behind behind when it came to being in front of everyone else.

She thought about her parents, how they’d react if she didn’t get into a good college.

She thought about how all of the hours upon hours of work she’d put in thus far would go to waste.

She thought about how much she’d hate herself if she failed.

She thought about so many things that she couldn’t even remember why she felt so comfortable going to sleep, when there was so much she could be doing to be extra, to be more than she was.

Her body moved two steps ahead of her brain as she slid out from under the covers, trying not to make too much noise as she crept back upstairs to where she knew her backpack and books were.

Twilight didn’t know how long she sat there, alone, reading through her own notes, adding some more from another open book under Dash’s desk lamp, before someone groaned behind her.

“Do not tell me you’re seriously sneaking off in the middle of the night to read.”

She turned, though the act was thoroughly unneeded to know who stood in the doorway.

Guiltily, like she’d been caught committing a crime, Twilight looked up at Dash.

“I… couldn’t sleep?” she offered.

Dash frowned at her sleepily, rubbing at one of her eyes as they adjusted to the stark brightness from the lamp, before entering the room and creaking the door shut behind her.

She glanced at the ritual circle of books spread out around her friend with an expression that Twilight had seen on too many faces for it to be anything foreign. Worry.

Dash sat down in front of her, crossing her legs, and tugged the pen and notebook from her hands.

“I’m fine, Dash,” Twilight preemptively said. “This is just what I do.”

“Come back downstairs. Everyone else is sleeping.”

“You can go, I’m staying here.”

“God, you hardcore nerds are insufferable.”

Twilight didn’t respond, eyes shifting back to the books around.

“Why do you… why do you do all of this?”

“Huh?”

Dash sighed, taking a moment to think before rephrasing her question. “Why do you push yourself so hard? Even when it’s clearly not good for you?”

“Because I have to get into a good college.”

“You’re already gonna get into a good college. You’re the best in our year.”

“I have to get into the best college. There’s only so many best spots and…”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you have to get into the best college?”

“Because I just… I just do.”

“I get wanting to be the best. Trust me, I get it. But this isn’t… I don’t… I don’t know how to say it.”

“Then just go back downstairs and leave me alone.”

Dash pursed her lips. “Not unless you’re coming with.”

“I told you, I can’t sleep. I thought you weren’t going to—”

“I’m not mothering you. I’m your friend.”

“I don’t get why you are,” Twilight said, before she could stop herself or even wonder about what that statement meant.

It hung in the air, the loudest thing to possibly pierce through the silence that descended, ugly and small and dangerously deep.

“Are you asking me why I like you? Seriously?”

Twilight avoided Dash’s gaze.

“I’m not— I mean, I was never nice to you or anything. I paid you to teach me chess. I know we’re doing a trade thing now but… I mean… I’m not fun like Pinkie or Applejack or Rarity or anyone else you’re friends with. I don’t… have interesting hobbies. I don’t do spontaneous things or go out and do stuff or anything that could possibly make you interested in wanting to spend time with me.”

“I… it started as paying me, yeah. But do you really think I couldn’t find another tutor if I really wanted my grades up?... God, are you really gonna make me say it?”

Twilight finally looked up at her, eyes imploring.

“Sure, you’re not… loudly fun. But I like being with you. It’s not in the obvious way like Pinkie, but you’re… urgh, this is so cheesy…”

“You don’t have to—”

“Shut up, egghead. I’m finding the words.” Dash let out an exasperated exhale. “Do you really think you’re not cool to be around? You’re funny, you’re smart, and yeah you can be a real smartass sometimes but when you’re not trying so hard to be better than everyone, you’re… sparkly.”

“Sparkly?” The phrasing was so absurd that Twilight snorted.

“Fine! I take it back, sit here and wallow,” Dash huffed and made a show of getting up to leave.

“Wait!” Twilight grabbed her hand, tugging her back down. “I’ll shut up. I promise. Keep going.”

Rainbow glared at her, but when Twilight didn’t retract her hand, any genuine irritation vanished.

“You kind of remind me of the night sky. That kind of sparkly.”

“You know, stars don’t actually twinkle. It’s just an illusion, caused by light refraction when the Earth’s atmosphere distorts the stars’ light based on their varying temperatures and densities. It’s called atmospheric scintillation.”

“All I’m hearing is that science says they’re sparkly.”

Twilight giggled, despite herself.

During the silence that settled, Dash moved herself so she leaned against her desk by Twilight’s side.

There were another few moments before Twilight spoke again.

“I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about what’ll happen if I fail. I can’t explain why, but when I think about doing less than beyond perfect, I feel like… like something bad’s about to happen. Like the world’s about to end.”

She didn’t know why she kept talking. It was like once she started, the lid on her overflowing thoughts refused to clamp back down.

“I started just being good at school. Then people added their expectations, and I kept doing extra credit, and then it just kept growing, until everything that used to be good enough just felt like something I’d already lapped.

“Like if I stop outdoing myself, I’ll just start going backwards, falling down.”

She turned her head against where she’d dropped it back against the desk to see Dash was staring at her.

“If you fall, you just get back up.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I know it’s not. If it was, you’d have thought of it already. I’m not saying I get what you’re going through or anything but… if you’re already so far ahead maybe… don’t go backwards but… stay where you are.”

“If I rest for too long, something will… I just can’t.”

“Nah.”

“Nah? You can’t just say nah to that.”

“Things will always come along to ruin your plans. Things will always come up to delay where you think you should be. You just need to learn to be okay with that crap, and learn to keep going even after slowing down. Sometimes you have to slow down to go faster.”

“That makes…no sense.”

“Maybe I’m just sooooo wise that my words are so smart that you’re just not on my level.”

“Or maybe you’re not making any sense because you woke up in the middle of the night,” Twilight smiled.

“Rich coming from you.”

“I’m used to this. If I started sleeping well I’m sure my body would go into shock and have no idea what to do with itself.”

“You didn’t expect me to be better at chess than you, right?”

“Huh? What does that have to do with anything?”

“But you didn’t, right?”

“I… didn’t.”

“So maybe there’s something else that I know that you don’t. Maybe I’m right that it’ll be okay if you rest. Don’t go backwards just… stay still.”

“I don’t…”

“Just try. Sit here with me and just do nothing. For a bit. See if the world crashes down. If like, half an hour passes and it was the worst thing ever, I promise I’ll leave you alone for tonight.”

“Are you going to use this chess thing as a trump card against me every single time you think I’m wrong about something?”

“I’m keeping a tally of every time I’m righter about something than you as a backlog.”

Twilight thought for a moment. Her head hurt.

The room was quiet.

“I’ll set a timer,” Dash offered.

Finally, Twilight relented.

“Half an hour.”

Dash grinned, then went to fetch a blanket they hadn’t found a place for in the pillow fort from her bed as well as a cushion that she propped behind their heads.

“Just sit here with me and do nothing.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “It’s impossible to do nothing.”

“Then close your eyes and… and I’ll talk about, uh… Daring Do. And you listen.”

“Typical,” Twilight said, but let her eyes close.

Her voice hushed, Dash started to ramble about her opinions on the movie version and inaccuracies to the novel.

It was strange.

For as loud and rough she could be, between them in that moment, her words were hushed, deliberately and strangely gentle.

Twilight held on, listening for as long as she could, before she started to drift off.

‘I’ll wake up in half an hour…’ she thought, her brow smoothing over.

Dash kept talking until Twilight couldn’t hear her anymore, and when the alarm sounded, it rang for a minute before automatically shutting off.

No one was awake to hear it ring.

Author's Note

I had a lot of fun writing this chapter! I had a lot more planned for the sleepover scene, but in the end, I decided to keep it shorter because I really wanted to write the last scene.

I wrote a lot of myself in with Twilight's worries about the unexplainable urge to constantly achieve something. It's exhausting not being able to explain exactly why you have to excel at everything to feel any sort of worth in yourself, but I feel this version of Twilight would feel exactly that.

Dash seems like she'd certainly relate to the need to be the best, but even in the show, she knows when it's important to rest. She pushes herself as hard as possible to train towards her goals, but she's also always napping and having fun and though it may look like laziness or being overly carefree from the outside, recognizing the importance of rest and when to take a break is often undervalued, I think. Taking breaks, even if it feels like slacking, ironically gets you closer to your goals than if you pushed through and burnt out before achieving anything at all.