-RARITY-

When I walked back inside my apartment after my talk with Fluttershy, Twilight was awake, albeit barely, and groggily sitting at the breakfast table in the living room with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, the curtains drawn and bathing her in the warm glow of the morning sun.

I walked up to her without a word and threw the golden envelope onto the table in front of her. At first she was clearly galled by my lack of tact and glowered at me, but when she saw my cold stare fixed on the envelope she begrudgingly looked down at it herself and, realizing what it was, her eyes widened and she looked back at me in shock. I nodded slowly, a smile creeping onto my face despite myself.

“Will you please…” I really thought I could say what I wanted to without the words choking themselves down in my throat, but I was wrong! “Will you join me? Will you go with me to Baltimare, and to Fillydelphia and Manehattan… will you join Bifrost with me and fight alongside me?”

“Wow, that’s… this is really sudden…” Twilight said seriously, her eyes darting anxiously between me, the envelope and the window. “Do you even have any idea of what that would mean? What would happen to our lives here?”

“Some life,” I sneered venomously. I shook my head sadly when Twilight raised a concerned eyebrow and said calmly, “I can’t force you, obviously. I wouldn’t want to even if I could, but I…”

I growled irritably and slammed a hind hoof into the beam between the kitchen and living room, gasping as my face twisted into a pained wince from massively hurting my leg in the process.

I slowly exhaled my pained breath and said serenely, “I need to do this. I need to.”

“You’ve never been one for half measures…” Twilight chuckled and rolled her eyes, taking a sip of her coffee, “I’ll give you that.”

Twilight sighed softly, her gaze fixed out the window toward the back alley next to our apartment. “Rarity, if we leave our apartment to go compete in a fighting tournament… we won’t be able to come back to it.”

“I know,” I said distantly.

“We’ve lived here for years,” Twilight continued, “and rent was far cheaper when we moved in. Between my disability and… like, the pathetic allowance that we still have to depend on from our parents… I don’t know if we would be able to find another apartment with just the two of us.”

“Yes, I am aware,” I said sternly.

“Not to mention that getting those disability payments in the first place was…” Twilight groaned exaggeratedly, and for good reason.

“A nightmare,” I said. “And yes, through some ridiculous legal loophole you will probably lose them if you leave and won’t be able to get them back.”

“You actually comprehend the risks that you’re taking,” Twilight smiled at me. “You honestly understand the magnitude of the consequences to this course of action.”

“I do,” I nodded confidently. “And if we go to this tournament only to lose in the preliminaries or something, then I will have ruined our lives for absolutely nothing. I understand this. If that happens we shall be forced to move back in with our parents, and I…”

I shook my head vigorously and scoffed.

“I refuse to accept that will happen, but… it is a risk that I am willing to take. But I don’t know what will happen to you, so I completely understand if you don’t want to do this.”

“Welp, it’s a good thing that I wanted to join your team anyway, Rarity!” Twilight said with a bright smile and a sparkle in her eye, my jaw practically dropping to the floor in shock. “I had you going though! Who says Twilight Sparkle is above a good prank every now and then!” Twilight’s self-satisfied giggle was the cutest thing I’d ever heard.

“So you’ll come with me…” I said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“I will…” Twilight took another sip of her coffee. “But that still only makes two of us. You and I both know that we need three to make a full team. I don’t suppose Fluttershy—”

“Is on Rainbow’s team,” I said curtly.

“Ah.”

Twilight grumbled and looked down at her cup with a resentful scowl on her face.

“And we can’t just join up with anypony… I may be a gifted magician but I’m not exactly a star combatant and you—”

Twilight stopped herself and her cheeks flushed before she could let out what would certainly be a cutting remark about my complete lack of fighting prowess, a remark that would no doubt sting my pride, but would not be unearned.

“Correct…” I grumbled, slumping into a chair at the table. “We would need someone who’s a good fighter. Someone strong, reliable, dependable… trustworthy especially.”

I clicked my tongue and scoffed, staring absentmindedly into the distance as I said without thinking, “Of course.”

“Somepony tough who can balance out our deficit of physical strength…” Twilight pondered, more or less talking to herself in order to come up with a solution. “And we need to find this pony…” Twilight looked at me skeptically.

“By tonight,” I didn’t feel the need to look at Twilight as I answered her, my eyes still fixed into the distance. “We need to catch the express train that leaves here at ten o’clock tonight headed straight for Baltimare, because the tournament starts tomorrow.”

“Of course,” Twilight groaned disgustedly, hanging her head in anguish. “So what we need is a really strong, honest and capable pony…”

“Right,” I said.

“One who can be relied upon and who won’t crack under pressure…” Twilight continued and I nodded. “Somepony who’s tough as nails, perhaps a real working girl, rugged and fierce, but dignified and stoic in her own stubborn way…”

“I cannot believe you’re doing this by accident…” I said with a cold laugh, Twilight looking at me curiously. “You haven’t met her to my knowledge, but I know a pony that fits the exact description you just gave…”

“Great!” Twilight said cheerfully, bouncing out of her chair and stamping her hooves eagerly on the tile floor. “Then let’s get going.”

“Yes, let’s…”

I sighed forlornly and stepped onto the ground myself, stretching my legs and arching my back to awaken my weary muscles.

“Let’s go talk to my ex.”

****

-FLUTTERSHY-

I stared out the train window and watched the winter landscape roll by.

Trains were also so soothing to me but I hadn’t been on one since I was a kid. This was nice. It was also nice that Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and myself were the only ones in our car so I had an opportunity to get to know my teammates without the added pressure of feeling like strangers were staring at me.

That said, while I was feeling very relaxed about the two when we got on the train, it wasn’t long before my anxiety came back in force and I was pretty nervous about starting a conversation with either of them.

Rainbow Dash was sitting in the same aisle as me a few feet away, looking solemnly out the window, and Pinkie Pie was hanging off a seat on the opposite aisle kicking her hind legs into the air. No one said a word for what felt like an eternity… but it was probably only a few minutes.

“Um…” I murmured. I needed to break the silence somehow but had no idea what to say.

“What’s up, Fluttershy?” Pinkie asked intently, staring at me with her big saucer eyes. Rainbow Dash started looking over my way too and even though there were only two of them I suddenly felt like I had a million sets of eyes on me all at once.

I was starting to feel a little panicked and shrunk down into my seat like I wanted to curl into a ball. Pinkie Pie looked very concerned and said “Is everything okay?”

“There’s no need to be nervous, Fluttershy,” Rainbow said coolly. “Neither of us bite.”

“Unless you want us to!” Pinkie winked with a big smile, still hanging upside down off the seat and making me laugh. Rainbow rolled her eyes but I could see her trying not to smile. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist!” Pinkie said to her with a big grin.

“I just…” I spoke up again but again the words got stuck in my throat. I felt far too nervous to talk about anything personal and I was awful at small talk, I always got too… bleugh. So anyway, I didn’t know what to say.

“Um…” I felt their eyes burning into my skin and it was suddenly like I was under a dozen heat lamps. “So, um… what exactly is the, um… the prize… for winning this whole thing?”

“For winning Bifrost, you mean?” Rainbow asked. I nodded my head shakily.

“The power… of the GODS!” Pinkie said dramatically, kicking her hind legs straight into the air and flailing her forelegs wildly, although the excess movement made her fall out of the seat with a yelp and bonk her head on the ground. “I’m okay!” She said as she lied in a heap, making Rainbow and I both laugh.

“The power of the gods?” I asked curiously. “What does that… what does that mean exactly?”

“Every ten years,” Rainbow explained, “the three team members who win Bifrost are granted some kind of miraculous super power. Nopony knows where the power comes from, but it gives its wielder tremendous strength and magical ability. They keep the power for ten years until the end of the next Bifrost and can basically do whatever they want to with it.”

“Oh,” I said. That was, um… not a very useful prize to me. I couldn’t really think of anything that I would want to do with, um… ‘power’. Money maybe, but power? That made me… ugh, like everything, it made me nervous.

“That’s why they call it Bifrost,” Rainbow scoffed and rolled her eyes. “It’s supposed to be like the fiery rainbow bridge that connects earth to the realm of the gods. Get it, like you get the power ‘of the gods’ and the tournament is like the bridge?” Rainbow shook her head and laughed. “It’s not nearly as clever as they probably think that it is.”

“It sounds cool though!” Pinkie added cheerfully, still laying on her back on the ground. “Even if they forgot the nubbins on top of the ‘o’!”

“What do people usually do with this power?” I asked, eager to keep the conversation going.

“One time, one of the winners used the power to buy out a chocolate bar company!” Pinkie said, taking a crunch out of a chocolate bar that… actually I have no idea where it came from. “They’re my favorite champion!”

“Well, most people are selfish, small-minded nerds,” Rainbow shrugged. “So usually people just use the power for their own personal gain. Make money, get revenge on enemies, small town crap like that.

“The chocolate bar guy won Bifrost sixty years ago, he was only the second ever champion, and he’s probably the most notable one since most people tend to just disappear into their own lives once they have ultimate power.”

Rainbow scoffed and looked back out the window. I think she was trying to hide it but I could see real anger burning in her eyes. “Once you’ve hit the top, where else is there to go?”

“The type of person to join an ultimate, prestigious fighting competition,” Pinkie added, “is nooooot generally the type of person to easily settle down after it’s finished. But with no one else to fight who can challenge them… ” Pinkie shrugged, “Most people just kinda… disappear into their own lives, like Rainbow said.”

“And the type of person to win an ultimate, prestigious fighting competition,” Rainbow chuckled, “is not the type of person to have big plans for what to do after the fact.”

“Nopony’s tried to take over the world or anything?” I asked.

“If you try to do anything obviously illegal with the power,” Rainbow explained, “they have some method of taking the power away. Some ritual or other. Worst anyone’s ever done with it, as far as anyone knows, is try to rob banks. That guy was pretty shocked to find his power suddenly not working and was thrown in jail fast as anything.”

“Oh,” I muttered. “That doesn’t sound like much of a prize then…” I mumbled.

“I mean, there are all kinds of nasty rumors about people who win the prize!” Pinkie added. “Nothing concrete, and mostly implausible, but we could tell you about some of those!”

“No thanks,” I said curtly. I think I had enough to be worried about without adding conspiracy theories to the list.

“It’s more about the fighting itself though,” Rainbow said with a haughty grin. “The prize is really more a gimmick than anything. The reason people sign up for this thing is to test their mettle against the strongest fighters in the world!” Rainbow pounded her hooves together, suddenly becoming very lively and energized.

“Also the free food!” Pinkie said excitedly. “People also join for all the restaurants and luxury hotels that buy into Bifrost and give out free stuff to the fighters! It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for cuisine connoisseurs such as myself!”

“I see…” I said ponderously with a hoof pressed against my smile. Now that was something I could get invested in.

There was one last question still on my mind though.

“So who won the tournament the last time then?”

“OHMIGOSH!!”

Pinkie suddenly screamed and sprung up from the ground and jumped toward me, nearly giving me a heart attack, and put her forehooves right on the edge of my seat. “Fluttershy! We need to go to the snack car!”

“W-what?” I said nervously, clutching my heart.

“There’s a free snack car on this train!” Pinkie said exasperatedly, flailing her forelegs at me. “We need to load up on snacks!”

“I’m, um, I’m not that hungry right now,” I said anxiously, trying to take deep, calming breaths without making it too obvious (it wasn’t working).

“We don’t have any money,” Pinkie whispered as she leaned in close to me, me leaning back awkwardly as she approached. “Until we get the free food in the tournament proper, we won’t be eating very much.”

“Oh dear,” I said dismally, my ears flattening against my head. “So you want to not just stuff yourself with snacks, but squirrel some away for the entire trip.”

“Yuppers!” Pinkie nodded vigorously.

I sighed despondently.

I hadn’t really thought much about food or anything for this journey but the picture Pinkie painted was pretty bleak. Though… nothing I wasn’t used to, I suppose.

“Alright, let’s go get snacks,” I gave Pinkie a half-hearted smile before looking over at Rainbow who was staring listlessly out the window, her eyes curiously stern. “Are you coming, Rainbow?”

“Wha? Uh, nah,” Rainbow snapped to attention like I brought her out of deep thought and batted her hoof dismissively, flashing a coy smile. “I’ll catch up with you guys.”

“Okay,” I said meekly.

Something was obviously bothering her all of a sudden. Something I said? Oh, I hope not. I hope I didn’t put my hoof in my mouth already…

I couldn’t really dwell on that though as I felt Pinkie yanking my leg and dragging me toward the snack car.

****

-RARITY-

Twilight and I came to a fairly ramshackle wooden building, practically more shed than house.

It was the last place you would expect someone like me to want to be within five feet of, let alone be seeking it out on purpose, but the woman who lived here was…

Ahem.

I walked up to the door and began to feel ill, but I ignored that feeling and gave the door a few light taps and placed my ear against it. After a second we heard a distance voice shout, “It’s unlocked! Let yerself in!”

That was her. Hearing her voice for the first time in so many years made me… anxious. It made me a lot of things; swoon, sick, nostalgic, sad, giddy… but most of all it made me anxious.

This was a gamble, asking a woman I hadn’t spoken with in years to drop everything to join my Bifrost team… but if I knew this woman the way I always believed I did, I had to believe my gamble would pay off.

I snapped back to reality and saw Twilight looking at me with concern. I smiled at her and shrugged with a satisfied smirk on my face, placing a hoof upon the handle and opening the door with an extremely noisy creaaaaak.

The inside of the house didn’t fare much better than outside, with dusty wooden floors that had holes in them and no furniture at all to speak of, any light from the sun blocked out by the sturdy boards nailed across broken windows. If I didn’t know better it would be so easy to assume this place had been left abandoned for decades.

“Who could possibly live here in this condition?” Twilight balked, aghast at the sight of this place.

“A tough as nails pony who is exactly the type of person we need for our team,” I replied without missing a beat.

“I suppose I can’t argue with that…” Twilight said drolly, daintily walking on the tips of her hooves in order to avoid any wrong steps that might send her crashing through the floorboards. “You’d have to be tough as nails to live like this.”

I guided Twilight through the entrance room of the house and into a large, empty wooden chamber that had neither boarded windows nor holes in the floor. Sunlight poured in like a heavenly glow upon the only two objects in the room; some sort of exercise… thing, one of those ones that has like a bar that you lift yourself up on, you know the type… and the large, rugged orange earth pony holding herself up on the bar by her hind legs.

The blonde mare flexed her legs and lifted herself above the bar with a grunt, sweat glistening across her defined muscles as she held her forelegs behind her head. She exhaled smoothly, and gently let herself back down to a hanging position.

She hadn’t quite seen us walk in yet so I took the time to, ahem, politely stare.

She was so rugged… so buff…

“Good heavens,” I heard those words slip out of my mouth and nervously looked at Twilight, who shot me a knowing glance, causing me to blush and irritably avert my gaze from both mares, harrumphing and puffing up my cheeks for good measure.

Oh well. No time like the present.

I walked through the seemingly endless expanse between us, Twilight following behind me, and my heart beating faster and faster as I approached my former paramour. She looked rather content despite her meager surroundings, and I could see a radiant smile painted on her face as I drew near.

But her smile instantly turned to a look of pure shock as she locked eyes on the two of us.

“Did we come at a bad time?” I said teasingly, flicking my mane and feeling rather delighted to know that teasing her still felt so natural even after so many years. Despite the maelstrom of emotions tearing me apart from the inside, I still knew exactly how to play it cool around this one.

“Two seconds ago would’ve been a bad time,” The woman spoke and her darling southern accent lifted my spirits immediately. I almost swooned again too, curse her! “If ya’d caught me in the middle of pullin’ myself up, I’d’ve dropped myself straight through the floorboards, had the whole house fallin’ down on us.”

I laughed, “You’re so stubborn that even if this house were torn down all around you, you wouldn’t budge.”

“Ya got that right!” Applejack said with a laugh. She looked at me and gave a soft, nostalgic smile. “Didn’t expect to ever see you gracin’ my doorstep again, Rarity. What do I owe the pleasure?”

“Were you expecting somepony else?” I asked curiously, fluttering my eyelashes. “You let us in without a fuss.”

“No one specific,” the woman shrugged, and she even made that look dignified and cool. “Some of the local kids drop by sometime, askin’ me to teach ‘em how to fight or some such. Or sometimes my church goin’ friends drop off some food and baked goods cuz they know I don’t got a lot.”

Applejack looked at Twilight all of a sudden, and to be honest with the cocktail of emotions brewing inside me I had almost completely forgotten Twilight was present.

Twilight for her part was standing completely still, looking awkwardly at Applejack. I recognized that look, it was the same look Twilight gave to her very first magic teacher, or to those books about the princesses of old. Twilight was in awe.

“Where are my manners?!” Applejack said with a laugh and dropped off the bar, landing on her hooves effortlessly and reaching out a hoof to Twilight, “Name’s Applejack, it’s a pleasure.”

I watched Twilight for a second to see if she would move or react at all, but no. I expected as much, Twilight was not one for social interaction on the best of days and when she was around someone she admired, oof. It would be easier to draw blood from a stone than to get her to lighten up.

“I apologize…” my words were directed just as much at Twilight as they were toward Applejack and I put my hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “She’s a tad shy. Her name is Twilight Sparkle, she is my sister. Twilight, this young woman is my ex-girlfriend Applejack.”

“Twilight Sparkle?!” Applejack said in alarm, and I admit I was very surprised by her reaction. “You remember me at all, Twilight? We went to Sunday school together as kids?”

“Oh…” Twilight said distantly, like she was partially catatonic. “Right… Sunday school…”

I frowned and watched Twilight carefully for signs of distress. Her church-going days were before our parents met, before we met each other, but the few tales she shared with me about them were nothing but horror stories.

“Applejack…” Twilight said distantly, her eyes widening and her cheeks turning bright red but accompanied by a smile that was nothing short of joyous. “I do remember you! You’re… you’re that girl! Applejack!”

“You do remember!” Applejack said with a hearty grin, stamping her feet on the ground like a giddy schoolfilly.

“Of course,” Twilight whispered happily. I was a little lost but I smiled seeing the genuine warmth in Twilight’s gaze. “You taught me about trans solidarity, how could I ever forget you? You…”

Twilight blushed and shot me a look of pained realization.

“It’s okay, Twilight,” I said, “I know already.”

“We dated for a long time,” Applejack added with a cool grin.

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t accidentally outed Applejack to me.

Her fear assuaged, Twilight returned her attention to Applejack and bowed her head. “Your kindness meant the world to me.”

“A little kindness goes a long way,” Applejack said with a smile, her cheeks flushing adorably.

“It sure does,” Twilight mused.

“So anyhow,” Applejack paced over to the rightmost wall to grab an old brown hat and placed it atop her head before turning to my sister and I in order to give us her full attention, “what brings y’all to be my quaint little hamlet?”

“Bifrost.”

I produced the golden envelope from my saddlebag and levitated it over to Applejack. Applejack’s eyes widened in tremendous shock but they soon slit as a wicked grin crossed her face.

I couldn’t help mirroring it with my own dashing smirk. “We wish to join Bifrost but we find ourselves a pony short. We need somepony who can make up for what we lack in physical strength… someone who lives for competition perhaps, and is quite good at it.”

“Ya know what I’m gonna say or ya wouldn’t have come here,” Applejack said with a confident, glowing smile and grabbed the brim of her hat to pull it down over her eyes ever so slightly. I’d like to think she learned how to be so dramatic from yours truly. “Not gonna act like this ain’t an answer to my prayers.”

“Then we’re of the same mind,” I said assuredly.

“I’m ready to leave when y’all are,” Applejack chuckled, “I ain’t got business to take care of first and there’s nopony who needs to hear my goodbyes in person.”

“We leave tonight on the ten o’clock train to Baltimare,” I said coolly, Applejack nodding heartily in agreement and honestly, I couldn’t believe it was that easy. Just like that, our Bifrost team was complete and we were ready to head to the tournament.

I was rather proud of myself for keeping my composure and not bursting into hysterical giggles at the mere notion that I of all ponies was now seriously heading for the most prestigious fighting competition in Equestria! It was absurd, quite frankly!

Not to mention, there were a great many implications to be considered about my ex-girlfriend, with whom I parted on, uh, rather complicated terms, joining my team.

We would be spending an awful lot of time together and it wouldn’t take long for conversation to drift to our shared history. I briefly wondered if I was truly prepared for that, musing silently that it was almost more intimidating than the actual fights we would find ourselves up against.

No matter. All those thoughts could wait for another day, for now I could simply revel in the fact that everything was ever so briefly going my way.

“But first,” Twilight interjected, “isn’t there another detail that we’re forgetting?”

“Oh?” I asked curiously, looking toward my sister with an arched eyebrow.

“Yeah!” she declared excitedly, “Our team may have the right number of ponies now, but we still need a name!”

“That’s right…” I softly traced my chin with my hoof. “To enter a team into Bifrost it needs to have an official name. Also the name has to follow the ‘Team X’ format, so we can only be so creative.”

“I dunno, Team Rarity?” Applejack chuckled while winking in my direction.

“N-no,” I said abruptly, my cheeks turning red. “What kind of egotist names a team after themselves?”

“Rarity, how do you feel…” Twilight said, her voice ringing like a clear bell, “about ‘Team Destiny’?”

“Team Destiny?” The words felt effortless as I said them, like they had always been inside me somehow ready to be freed.

“We both want to enter this competition to see if we can change our fates,” Twilight explained, “and Applejack said she had been praying for this moment….”

“Yer not wrong,” Applejack chimed in with a smile.

“Then I suppose…” I grinned satisfactorily and puffed up my chest, seeing an opportunity for true theatrics that I would be cursing myself if I did not seize!

“Whether it be destiny in the nihilistic sense of nothing being able to be changed, or in the grand cosmic sense that we’re all being led to some greater purpose…

“It is destiny, as a concept, that binds this team together! So I believe that Team Destiny is—nay, I believe there could not be a more perfect name for us than that!”

I shouted dramatically, Twilight enraptured by my speechifying and Applejack, despite her futile attempt to hide it, was equally mesmerized.

“I mean,” Applejack couldn’t stop herself from laughing heartily and I found myself quite amused by that reaction, “how can we say no to that sell?”

****

-FLUTTERSHY-

The snack car was bigger than I thought it would be and was much more like a buffet than… well actually, I don’t really know what I was expecting. I guess I thought it would be like a vendor who sold pretzels or something.

There were nine other ponies in the room, apparently all Bifrost competitors, which made me a little on edge. But for whatever reason having Pinkie Pie nearby helped me feel at ease for the most part.

“So how do you and Rainbow Dash know each other?” I asked idly as Pinkie and I threw food onto our plates that was eventually going to find its way into our bags.

“Oh we’ve known each other since forever,” Pinkie giggled. “My family and her—huh.”

Pinkie stopped cold mid-sentence and stood silent for a second, taking her eyes off the buffet and looking upwards. Then her eyes started scanning from left to right like she was reading some book in her own head.

“She’s a family friend, I guess you could say,” Pinkie continued nonchalantly, like she didn’t even notice that she suddenly stopped and restarted. “We knew each other as kids, and I grew up with three sisters, and I mean like, cisters, you get me?”

Pinkie looked at me with a big grin and needled me with her foreleg. “Eh? Get it?”

“I don’t,” I shook my head, “I’m sorry.”

“Like cisters? Like cis?” Pinkie had the same big goofus grin and it suddenly dawned on me what she meant.

“Oh!” I said, blushing. “Sorry, I wouldn’t have—they’re pronounced exactly the same. You mean cisgender? Right?”

My body went cold and my face sheet white as I suddenly realized I may have just outed myself on accident for no reason.

“Right!” Pinkie giggled, and to say I felt relieved would not even describe it. I felt revived. “I knew you’d get it!”

Pinkie started walking toward a table but suddenly froze and turned at me, cheeks red with embarrassment. “Not that, I mean, I wouldn’t—” she seemed very flustered all of a sudden and I wasn’t sure why. “You look—you’re really girly, I wouldn’t have ever guessed that—wait no that sounds bad!” Pinkie slapped herself on the forehead.

“It’s okay,” I laughed quietly, walking toward a table and lightly tugging on Pinkie’s leg to get her to follow. “You know that I’m trans. I’m guessing Rainbow told you?”

For whatever reason it still hadn’t occurred to me that Pinkie was trans as well.

“Rainbow?” she asked confusedly. “Oh! No, I could just tell. Not that you look it or anything!” Her face became red again which made me laugh as we sat down across from each other in a booth in the corner of the room.

“I know… I’m very blessed in that regard,” I said serenely. “I’ve never had a problem passing before… so how could you… ‘just tell’?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, is it not obvious?” Pinkie chuckled. “I’m trans too. That’s why I made the cis pun earlier.”

“Oh. Oh! Duh!” I slapped my forehead and Pinkie laughed, making me laugh happily too. “So you were telling me about Rainbow, about how you two knew each other as kids? She’s trans as well so is that part of how you guys got to know each other?”

“Right.”

Pinkie nodded, vivaciously tearing into the mountain of food in front of her.

“My parents,” she said, “Luna bless ‘em, are wonderful and my sisters equally so. But I’ve always been kinda the oddball of the family, the black sheep as it were. And not just cuz I was adopted. I knew I was meant to be a girl since I was real young, like, before I was adopted even.”

“Did your family accept that?” I asked, dreading the answer. Family can be tough sometimes, especially for people like us.

“Yeah, yeah.” Pinkie nodded enthusiastically. “Luna bless childhood innocence because I was too young to realize that being trans is considered ‘weird’ so when I knew I wanted to be a girl, I just… said it.”

Pinkie shrugged and then laughed nervously. “I started wearing dresses and stuff and doing my hair all the time.” Pinkie fluffed up her glorious curly mane with a proud smile, “A mane like this doesn’t groom itself y’know.”

I chuckled at that and asked, “So what did your parents say? How did your sisters react?”

“My sisters are all older than me,” Pinkie explained, “but we’re all pretty close in age. They didn’t think anything was weird about it at all, they just accepted it as part of who I am. And my parents, well they just wanted me to be happy.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said cheerfully. I really couldn’t have been happier to hear all that. I was pretty inundated with terrible, tragic family stories about trans women so it was amazing to hear about a family that was actually accepting and welcoming of Pinkie’s identity.

“But like I said,” Pinkie continued with a wistful sigh, “I’ve always been kinda the oddball of the family. My family is super accepting of who I am and they love me, but they don’t, like, get it, y’know?”

“I think so,” I nodded.

“So when I met Rainbow,” Pinkie’s eyes lit up as she spoke about Rainbow and that made me really happy, “and I realized that she was just like me, it was like a whole new world opened up in front of me!

“Rainbow felt it too, suddenly we weren’t alone in the world, suddenly we didn’t have like this thing about us that made us different, that made us weird. We suddenly realized there were other ponies like us and we found solidarity between us.

“It was a beautiful thing. So Rainbow’s been like a fifth sister to me ever since.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said, feeling a little misty-eyed. “Wait,” I suddenly tilted my head curiously, “fifth sister? I thought you said you had three sisters?”

“Oh yeah,” Pinkie laughed, “I also have a blood sister, but we were split up when I was adopted.”

“Oh no, that’s terrible,” I said sadly.

“No, it’s okay!” Pinkie said assuredly. “We keep in touch and we used to hang out all the time, but then Rainbow and her kinda started fighting a lot and…”

Pinkie trailed off and her face scrunched up. She looked unusually serious and that was not doing good things for my anxiety.

“Pinkie?” I said timidly.

“Uh, anyway!” Pinkie let out a single awkward laugh, “Applejack and I are still super tight, so don’t worry!”

“That’s good to hear,” I breathed a sigh of relief.

“What about you?” Pinkie asked with a generous smile, “Any family to speak of?”

“No.”

Pinkie winced at my reaction but she tried to hide it behind a smile to spare my feelings, which was nice of her. I wanted to say something else, try to ease the tension a little, but I felt awful for responding that way and like I didn’t deserve to say anything else, so I just… kept quiet.

Luckily Pinkie Pie spoke more than enough for both of us, regaling me with tales about her and Rainbow’s childhood misadventures, she talked a lot about baking and examined a bunch of the food on her plate to talk about the different ways she would prepare the same meals, and a whole bunch of other things.

I didn’t have much to say, just a few smiles here and a nod there, but Pinkie didn’t seem to mind. It felt nice to be able to talk to someone and not feel that pressure that I usually feel, like if I don’t say the right thing one hundred percent of the time, they’d stop talking to me in disgust.

Talking with Pinkie, or at least listening to her talk, was easy. The only other pony I’d had such an easy relationship with was Rarity… and thinking about that made me wonder how Rarity was doing.

I hoped she was alright… and I really hoped I would see her when we got to Baltimare.

I bet she and Pinkie would get along great.

****

-TWILIGHT SPARKLE-

My parents took me to church since I was little, like since before I could remember.

I always hated it.

They would go to service and leave me behind in a room full of other kids who I didn’t know and I would always sit by myself in the corner, wishing I could join the other kids in all the fun they looked like they were having but instead my anxiety kept me isolated…

No, not just my anxiety. To the other kids I must have just seemed like a boy who wore a dress and I was sure every one of those kids thought I was a freak. I hated every second of it every week.

Usually the teachers, such as they were since they were just other church going parents who volunteered, would just read from the scripture or talk about it or some other thing related to the religion. We’d learn a little but mostly it was just a playdate for the kids.

One week we had a little service of our own, one of the pastor’s older kids came by to give a full-on sermon and all of us younger kids needed to stand for it. Or at least, that’s what I thought at first.

We all stood up as the pastor’s kid began to speak but I must’ve misheard something because all the others kids sat down but me and I only noticed they were all sitting when I heard one kid snicker from behind me, wondering why ‘the dress boy’ was still standing.

I was so embarrassed I wanted to die, when suddenly a blonde-haired orange filly, just young enough to still be in the ‘young kids’ part of church but old enough to command automatic respect from an impressionable youth like me, stood up next to me.

I hadn’t noticed until she stood but her body was unmistakably that of a colt and I remember the words she said to me crystal clear. She looked at me, gave me a wink and a sincere smile and said, “We girls gotta look out for each other”.

We never got the chance to get close, my parents got divorced a few months after that incident and we stopped going to church, but every week after that I looked for that girl in the crowd of kids.

She wasn’t always there but when she was I always waved to her and tried to get her attention in a way that wouldn’t be too obvious. Usually she would see me and come over to my corner and say hi and she would talk to me when no one else would until my parents picked me up.

I didn’t have the words for it then but that girl taught me something important. She taught me that girls like us, trans girls who the world would discard and turn its back on so easily, we need to look out for each other, have each other’s backs no matter what.

That girl was my first experience with trans solidarity.

It was now early evening as I left the apartment to go see Applejack at her home. I wanted a chance to talk to her one-on-one before we left for the tournament, to catch up with her a bit. I mean, yeah, the chances of me actually being able to speak to her, let alone in coherent sentences, weren’t in terribly high percentages, but… this was important.

Applejack was sitting on the deck of her dilapidated house, next to her saddlebags that looked full to bursting, waiting for me as I arrived. I waved to her bashfully as I approached and she smiled sweetly, which made me somehow feel simultaneously more relaxed and more nervous.

“Did you get your affairs in order?” I asked, awkwardly brushing my bangs out of my face and letting them immediately fall back into place.

“Yup,” She nodded with a big smile.

While Applejack did say she was ready to leave as soon as she accepted our invitation, because we couldn’t head out until that evening she took the time to say goodbye to some of her local friends.

“Said my goodbyes, got my well wishes and such,” Applejack patted the saddlebags beside her, “and got a little food and some money for the trip thanks to some generous fellas too!”

“That’s great,” I said cheerfully with a nod. “Me and Rarity have some money in our savings we were planning to use for food and stuff, enough to tide us over until the tournament proper in Manehattan at any rate, but more resources are always good.”

“Oh yeah, all the free stuff,” Applejack chuckled and slapped a hoof lightly against her head. “Totally forgot about all that. Still though, fancy restaurant food is nice but nothin’ beats a home cooked meal,” she said with a smile.

A moment passed where we just looked at each other, and I think we were both reminiscing. I wondered how she felt about me back then? Did I bug her? Did I annoy her a lot? If my parents hadn’t gotten divorced, what would have happened with us? She’d probably grow to hate me or get tired of me or—

“I wanted to thank ya, for what ya said,” Applejack’s words broke me out of my anxiety spiral and I looked at her and blinked.

“Eh?” I said in a very undignified manner, “What did I say?”

“You said my kindness meant a lot to ya back then, and I just wanted to…” Applejack coughed nervously and her face turned really red.

“I wanted to say that I appreciate that you said that…” she continued, “I dunno, maybe it’s self-aggrandizin’ to thank you fer thankin’ me, but I…”

She stammered and cleared her throat abruptly.

“I just wanted to say I really appreciated hearin’ that, so uh… thanks, I guess?”

“Wow, um…”

Don’t screw this up, Twilight! Don’t make her feel like an idiot and don’t make a fool of yourself!

A sudden moment of realization and clarity washed over me and I knew exactly what to say.

“You must have had a hard time in church too, right? Nopony ever said anything to me, but I knew they were all talking behind my back… about how I was… weird.”

“Cuz yer trans,” Applejack hit the nail right on the head and I nodded timidly.

She sighed. “Yeah, I got that too. Especially cuz… well, lookit me,” she said with a laugh, “I’ve always been big, and not just tall but like big boned too.

“But I’m an honest sort and from the day I learned I was a girl I said it loud and proud. Had so much confidence as a kid too! Never let people misgenderin’ me slide, but it uh… it might not’ve been the best strategy.”

“What happened to you?” I asked, dreading the answer and shivering like a leaf.

“Eh, a little scoldin’ here,” Applejack shrugged, “a smack with a wooden spoon there. Nothin’ major but…” she groaned wearily, “Like ya said, everyone talks about it behind yer back. Everyone knows, and everyone thinks yer a freak.”

“You’re telling me,” I shuddered as I tried to suppress some truly horrible memories of childhood bullying.

Applejack looked up at me with a kind smile. “That’s why I was so happy that ya said what ya said…

“Like, I didn’t have anyone lookin’ out for me as a kid, so the idea that I was able to make someone else’s childhood a little less rough, that I could reach out to another trans kid and let ‘em know they weren’t alone…”

Applejack took a deep breath and her voice was cracking up a little bit.

“That means everything to me.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” I said bashfully and awkwardly kicked at the dirt, “but that was the moment that I realized I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t the freak everyone always said that I was. The days I spent with you were probably some of the happiest in my early childhood… so thank you, so much.”

“My pleasure,” Applejack said with a smile, tipping her hat to me. She was so cool.

A moment of silence passed and we just sort of looked at each other while smiling.

Suddenly I got very self-conscious and blurted out, “Oh hey train! We have a train to catch, we gotta catch a train!”

“Oh shi-eeeeeoot!” Applejack coughed, standing up with a start and making me laugh. “That’s a good point! Hey, why don’t I go pick up Rarity and you can meet us at the station?”

“By yourself?” I cocked my head to the side.

“Yeh, why not? It’s not a problem, is it?” Applejack asked with a bright smile. “I wanna get a chance to catch up with her real quick…”

“Ah, I see,” I said distantly.

I was nervous about being at the station by myself but I also really didn’t want to disappoint Applejack so I just kinda stood there in dumbstruck silence for a few seconds.

“I’ll get anxious if I’m at the train station by myself for too long,” I said monotonously like a pre-programmed robot but then violently pointed my hoof at Applejack and said with a cracking voice, “so don’t be long!”

“No worries!” Applejack gave a salute and put on her saddlebags. “Me and Rarity’ll be at the train station quick as ya blink! Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!”

As Applejack finished her statement with those weird nonsense words she also did weird nonsense gestures to accompany them, leaving me kinda dumbstruck and at a loss for words.

“What?”

“Eh, that’s a Pinkie Promise,” Applejack put a hoof behind her head and blushed. “It’s somethin’ I learned from my—well, from an old friend at any rate. It just means you can absolutely hold me to my word, cuz the fastest way to lose a friend is to lose their trust, so keepin’ promises is a huge deal.”

“Ah, I see,” I couldn’t help but laugh at how sincere and… girl-scout-like Applejack was being. “That’s cute, I like it.”

Applejack beamed in reply and I just… thought she was really cool.

****

-RAINBOW DASH-

The sun was almost completely out of sight as I watched the snowy plains of Equestria roll by in the train window. Pinkie and Fluttershy briefly returned to our car to drop off a couple bags full of food before returning to the snack car, laughing and giggling the whole time.

I breathed a sigh of relief at that.

Nopony makes you feel at home like Pinkie Pie but I was worried that she would be too loud and abrasive for Fluttershy, but that didn’t seem to be the case at all and they looked pretty comfortable with each other already. I mused that it was probably that trans solidarity at work.

The two of them hitting it off so well and spending the day together in another car also gave me a lot of time to be alone with my thoughts. It was all still really hitting me that I was on a train headed to Bifrost. A part of me still couldn’t believe I even got an invitation! But it was really happening and there was a lot to think about.

I was pretty confident in my skills but who knows what kind of opponents waited for Team Rainboom at the tournament. The thought briefly crossed my mind about what if we didn’t even make it past the preliminaries, and I almost died.

But no… sure, I was confident in my skills, but I was even more confident in my teammates. I’d been dreaming of going to Bifrost since the last one ended when I was eleven, and I always knew Pinkie would be on my team… but having Fluttershy too was a dream come true.

In all the time since that last Bifrost I’d never made another close friendship like what I have with Pinkie Pie, and while I couldn’t call what I had with Fluttershy a ‘close friendship’ exactly, I definitely felt like I could trust her and rely on her. And the fact that she actually wanted to be on our team was honestly enough reason to celebrate.

It was a load off my mind to have my third teammate set, and for them to be so promising. After a decade of searching, no less. So many false starts in that time, so many burned bridges… so many people saying ‘oh you’re good but I have someone better’…

Nothing but disappointments these last ten years…

I let out a deep sigh of disgust as my mind traced back through a lifetime of failures and disappointments, and I heard a haughty old man’s voice say, “So you made it after all, huh Rainbow Dash?”

My ears perked up as I recognized the voice and looked away from the window to see a pale blue pegasus with swept back gray hair, wearing an old bomber jacket just like mine and a white scarf, standing between the aisles looking at me.

His name was Wind Rider, a mercenary who was hired my f—that man—to train me when I was a kid. Never liked him, but he knew a few cool tricks and taught me some of them. Hadn’t seen him since I ran away from home with Pinkie Pie after the last Bifrost, and was honestly kinda baffled he even remembered me.

“Long time no see…” I said to Wind Rider, “And of course I made it,” I scoffed. “You didn’t think I was just gonna give up, did you? Honestly, I’m a little surprised that you made it.”

“My reputation precedes me, what can I say?” Wind Rider chuckled proudly.

There was almost nothing I wanted more than to slam my hoof into that man’s smug face, but no sense rocking the boat this early.

“I’ve been making a name for myself these last ten years,” he said, “How about you, any daring exploits?”

What an ironic question to ask just as I was in the middle of recollecting my lifetime of failure.

“Eh, probably nothing you would’ve heard of,” I said flippantly before pointing my gaze straight into Wind Rider’s eyes and saying confidently, “But once I’m the winner of Bifrost, everyone will know who I am.”

“Heh, I like your confidence,” Wind Rider chuckled mockingly and I felt my cheeks starting to burn. “You think after you win the tournament you’ll finally be able to defeat him?”

I stared coldly through the stallion.

“Are you looking for a fight right now?”

“Geez, sorry,” Wind Rider rolled his eyes and laughed. “Just reminiscing a little, I guess. Haven’t seen you in ten years but that’s all you ever talked about.”

“That was a long time ago,” I growled.

“So you’re saying it doesn’t matter to you anymore?” Wind Rider asked with a sneering smirk.

“I’m saying you need to drop it,” I shot back, hitting him with an angry glare.

“Whatever you say,” he shrugged and shook his head before fixing me with an amused glance and chuckling. “Really, you haven’t changed at all.”

“Heh, I dunno,” I let out a single, cold, dry laugh, “if I was the same person I was the last time we met, I’d have knocked your teeth out by now.”

“You’d be on the ground drooling blood more likely,” Wind Rider said coldly, turning his back to me with a shrug.

I glared coldly into his back like I hoped that my eyes could turn to daggers and drill into his skin. Everything in me wanted to react violently to his smug words but I knew too well, even though I hated to admit it, that he was right.

“I’m glad you’ve joined the tournament, old man,” I said, my voice a low growl that pierced through the stagnant air of the train like a surgery needle. “You’ll make a good stepping stone. I’ll crush you, then I’ll crush him and everyone else who works for him.”

“Sad that your dream will remain unfulfilled then, I guess,” Wind Rider said in mock sympathy.

“Say what you want,” I spat irritably.

I felt a chill crawling up my back and a darkness clawing at my mind, like some caged animal scratching at the door of my heart waiting to break free.

“It won’t change anything.”

“No, words don’t change anything,” Wind Rider walked back to the door he came through, “You can talk all you want, but at the end of the day you’re still just…” he looked over his shoulder at me and his eyes glinted with condemnation “you.”

With those words he left the car and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the darkness of my thoughts and in a sea of bad memories.

****

-RARITY-

No one likes you.

Those words were racing through my mind as I unwrapped the belt that I’d tied around my neck. I was breathing heavily as I grabbed the edge of the bathroom sink, struggling to lift myself up and look in the mirror.

I groaned miserably as my hoof traced across the bright pink indentation the belt had left across my throat.

“Good thing it’s winter weather.”

I grabbed my dark teal scarf that I’d thrown carelessly onto the edge of the bathtub and moved to put it on over my neck but I stopped myself.

I stood back in front of the mirror and stared deeply into that pink mark, the mark itself seeming to glow brighter and more intensely the more I looked into it.

“No one likes you,” I whispered coldly to my reflection, “don’t forget that.”

I took a deep breath and sighed.

How could I forget?

“Don’t forget it.”

No one likes me. But that’s…

Fine.

…

Right?

I sat back down on the bathroom floor and cradled my face in my hooves. A part of me wanted to blame Applejack for this depressive episode but… that wouldn’t be fair at all.

A swirling torrent of memories, cold nights spent in front of a warm fire, being carried through the door and tossed onto the bed, my body cradled by hers under the sheets…

It’s your fault that no one likes you.

“It’s my fault,” I whispered, face still in my hooves, my eyes shut tight so all I could see was darkness.

“I get it, I get it.”

I groaned and pounded a hind hoof against the wall, regretting it immediately as the wave of pain rushed through my leg.

“Why do I keep doing that?” I whined as I stood up and limped over to sit on the edge of the bathtub and examine my poor leg. “As if I don’t injure myself enough on purpose,” I chuckled sardonically and guiltily eyed the belt lying on the ground.

I groaned again and stepped back up to the bathroom sink, looking at my dead-eyed reflection in the mirror.

I thought about Applejack again, my mind flashing back to when I first met her, and then when I saw her today and I—

“She doesn’t like me,” I said breathlessly. “Why would she? How could she? Why would anyone? I got it, I get it. Yeesh.”

There were voices in my head like demons clawing at my mind constantly, reminding me that no one could ever love me, that I didn’t deserve it if they did. It was hard not to believe them but every once in a while I found a way to convince myself that I had value…

And that needed to stop. It didn’t end well for me, not ever.

I took another deep breath and sighed dramatically.

“I get it,” I said wearily.

A knock at the door made me literally jump off the ground in shock.

I raced for my scarf and threw it over me as fast as I could, heading out into the living room to answer the door. It was nine o’clock now so that must’ve been Twilight. She said she wanted to talk to Applejack for a moment before we left for the train station and since I needed to choke myself in the bathroom I didn’t stop her.

“You’re not Twilight,” I said warily as I opened the door and saw Applejack standing on the other side.

My nerves were already on high alarm since I saw her the first time and it was not helped by the hours I spent thinking about her after, with and without a belt around my neck, but it skyrocketed until I could feel it crawling inside my skin like a swarm of fire ants.

“I’m not, sorry,” she said with a chuckle, placing her hoof behind her head. “Twilight was gonna come by and grab you herself but I convinced her to let me do it instead.”

“Why?” I asked morbidly.

“I wanted a chance to talk to ya, obviously!” Applejack said with a smile, playfully punching her foreleg against mine. She wanted to talk to me… that…

No. I do not want you to talk to me. You don’t deserve… THIS.

“Um …” I took a deep breath and sighed testily, as if I worried that Applejack could hear the voice in my mind. “Okay… and why would you… why exactly would you want to do that?” I sniped back, sounding much colder than I had meant to.

“Uh, cuz we’re gonna be teammates?” Applejack laughed nervously. “I know we had our history and all, but come on, Rarity, it’s been years. If we’re gonna work together we gotta at least be a little comfortable with each other, right? Besides…” Applejack looked up at the sky and her cheeks began to turn pink, “I’ve missed you.”

“You’ve missed me?” I blushed and started to feel like a pile of wet garbage.

“Of course…” Applejack’s voice was a little strained, like she was digging through layers of dirt in her brain to find the part of herself that could say these things. “Our relationship ended… really messily. But I never blamed you for it, it was all my—“ she cleared her throat rather noisily to silence the nagging demon in her mind. I knew the motion quite well.

“It was just… a lotta bad circumstances. We were young and passionate, and…” Applejack shrugged, trying to laugh off her anxiousness, “When all ya got is passion and not much experience, that passion’s gonna run ya right into a wall.”

“I see.”

My mind was racing like a desperate hamster on a wheel and my insides felt like they were being slowly brought to a boil by a sadistic chef, but on the outside I must have seemed like some kind of robot.

“We should go…” I walked past Applejack and down the path outside my apartment, looking back at it one last time since I knew I wouldn’t be back.

Applejack looked… confused, at me. I accidentally made eye contact with her for a fraction of a second and immediately looked away, wanting to stab myself in the eyes with a hot poker. Why is she looking at me like that? Is she mad? I hurt her feelings, didn’t I? I’m such an idiot.

“Are you coming?” I said coldly. It was like I was watching my body move from outside it and my consciousness wanted to scream at my body ‘No! Don’t be like that! What is wrong with you?!’

“Yeah,” Applejack said coldly, dragging her hat down to frame her eyes in shadow.

We walked to the train station in silence.

****

-PINKIE PIE-

I plopped right down beside Rainbow Dash while Fluttershy was curled up asleep a few seats down the aisle. Our train was almost headed into Baltimare station where the Bifrost preliminaries would begin, but before we arrived I wanted to get one last heart-to-heart in with Rainbow pre-Bifrost.

“Hey,” I said casually as I sat beside her, my girl forlornly staring out the window.

“Things go alright with Fluttershy?” Rainbow said coldly, continuing to stare into the distance.

“Yup yup, she’s a really cool girl,” I said with a chuckle, “I’m glad she’s on our team, I think the three of us…” I took in a deep breath to steel my nerves and get confident! “I think we can really make this happen together, Rainbow.”

“Yeah…”

Rainbow sighed and looked at me with the weary eyes of someone who spent too long gazing into the dark past. She smiled, at first the cold smile of someone forcing themselves to act happy but I smiled tenderly back at her and that made her own smile grow until the light returned to her eyes.

“Yeah! We can definitely…” she stood up and puffed up her chest, looking briefly at sleeping Fluttershy to make sure she didn’t accidentally wake her before letting her voice quiet down to a whisper, “We’re definitely gonna do this.”

“Yay!” I whispered excitedly, jumping up and giving my dear Rainbow a hug.

“Guess who I saw today,” Rainbow sneered, my forelegs still wrapped around her and my eyes staring into hers. I blinked a couple times to acknowledge that I had no idea who and she should tell me. “Wind Rider.”

“Huh, no kidding,” my legs drooped away from Rainbow and I plopped back onto the seat.

“Yeah, he’s going to Bifrost too,” Rainbow sighed, ruffling up her mane.

“Of course, that makes sense,” I shrugged with a bemused grimace on my face. Then I grumbled a bit and crossed my forelegs before taking a deep breath and letting go of some lingering resentment with a soft sigh. “It was his dream too, after all.”

“Too bad his dream’s gonna get crushed by mine,” Rainbow softly pounded the seat with her hoof, a delightfully self-assured grin on her face, making me giggle. “I was a little rattled after I saw him…”

Rainbow’s posture dropped and her demeanor became cold again as she jumped off the seat and began to pace back and forth in front of me for a sec, but then she stamped her hoof and smiled.

She looked at me and said, “But honestly, I’m confident in our team, and hearing you say the same thing makes me twice as certain. We’re gonna win this thing.”

I beamed brightly at her and pumped my hoof toward her, Rainbow meeting my hoof with her own and bumping them together in solidarity.

“Oh hey, before I forget…” I awkwardly tapped my hoofsies together and frowned.

“Yeah?” Rainbow arched a concerned eyebrow as she sat back down next to me.

“How much should Fluttershy know about…” I paused and considered my words. Rainbow got really upset when we talked about this so I wanted to make sure I stepped lightly. “Y’know, the thing.”

“Oh, you mean…” Rainbow sighed irritably and hung her head. “Right. Thanks for covering earlier, by the way.”

“No problem,” I said quickly, “happy to help, but… shouldn’t she be aware of why we’re here? I mean, she is our teammate. Shouldn’t she know why winning is so important to you and what you’re planning to do?”

“No.”

Rainbow shook her head and I groaned, figuring that’s what she would say but I didn’t like it.

“Fluttershy is sweet, but she’s also pretty soft. I don’t think…” Rainbow let a dull growl escape her lips and she rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell her. I’m not gonna leave her in the dark, but… not yet.”

Rainbow took a deep breath and after a few seconds of breathless contemplation she sighed. “She deserves to know, she is our teammate, but… I just don’t know how well she’ll take to the whole ‘I’m trying to murder my dad’ thing.”

“Oh, is that all.”

Rainbow and I both froze and our ears shot straight up at the sound of Fluttershy’s voice. We both looked to our right as Flutters rose from her sleepy curl and stared coldly at the two of us.

“How long have you…” Rainbow coughed nervously.

“I don’t know who Wind Rider is,” Fluttershy said drowsily.

“Ah,” Rainbow squeaked, “Well, I’m not gonna lie to you.”

“Wind Rider is—”

Rainbow put a hoof over my mouth and said, “That’s not the important part, Pinkie.”

“You’re trying to…” Fluttershy took a deep breath and spoke tensely, her voice cracking like she was about to tear up. “You’re going to murder someone? Your own father?”

“After I get the power of the gods, yeah,” Rainbow said coldly and I felt a knot in my stomach. Rainbow never talked about this. Not anymore anyway.

“You asked before who the champion of the last Bifrost was… my dad was their team captain. He has that power now, and once I take it from him… I’m going to kill him.”

Fluttershy stared unflinching into Rainbow’s eyes, Rainbow’s gaze meeting her intensely and not wavering. I, sitting in between the two and sucking in all this tension, felt like I was about to explode from nervousness. Flutters closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Okay.”

“Wh—okay?” I said confusedly. “That’s it? Really? Just ‘okay’?”

“Rainbow Dash…” Fluttershy spoke calmly but her legs were shaking and her voice was starting to crack again, “I don’t know why you would want to do such a horrible…” Fluttershy groaned “I dunno… but I trust you.

“I understand why you didn’t want to say anything to me… and I appreciate your honesty, that you didn’t try to hide it once I found out.”

“Wow, you are giving me way too much credit,” Rainbow snickered, but I could tell by the way she was trying to stifle a genuine smile that she truly appreciated Fluttershy’s remark.

“Maybe…” Fluttershy chuckled and curled back into a ball to go back to sleep. “But I believe that people can change.”

Rainbow and I looked at each other with wide eyes, our mutual surprise making me laugh and I said, “See? I told you! She’s perfect!” I heard Fluttershy giggle softly and that made me smile, Rainbow’s earnest smile adding the perfect cherry on top.

“Yeah, I was sure before, but I’m definitely sure now,” Rainbow said confidently, “We’re totally gonna win this.”

“So Iris, what did you write today?”
Oh just a horse strangling herself with a belt, no big deal.

Also, come at me all of you “I don’t mind trans characters as long as there’s a story reason for it” CLOWNS!