They‘d been flying straight upwards for four, maybe five hours now. “Rainbow Dash, hold up a second.” Butterscotch called out to her. She was starting to get some distance ahead of him once more. She looked down and saw him; clearly struggling to keep flying. Dash came to a complete stop. “What are you doing? I just wanted you to slow down a bit.” he called out as he quickly caught up to her.
The race didn’t matter to either of them. They were coming about twentieth from what Butterscotch could tell and they had seen a few ponies heading back down already. And one gryphon.
“You need a break. No need to push yourself harder than you have to!” Dash said, and Butterscotch couldn’t deny it. He’d gotten further than he had planned and yet they were still only about a third of the way there, if that.
“C’mon Rainbow Dash, we both know I’m not making it all the way there. All I want to do is get as far as I can. And that’s not much further now.” his determination had faltered dramatically from when they’d begun. Sure he still wanted to keep going, he was just being realistic about how much further that would be.
“You can’t come this far and just quit, we’re almost there, look!” Dash said, pointing skyward. It was barely visible but amongst the spicks and specks of the other fliers up above, far beyond them, the tiniest dot could be seen. At least… she could see it.
“I don’t see anything Rainbow Dash, you sure it’s not just another racer?” Dash had forgotten she had much better eyesight than most ponies, one of the reasons she was hired by the Ponyville Weather Control.
“Well, it’s there. Trust me!”
“If you say so… I’m going to have a break.” he said, shuffling his saddlebag around to his front, pulling out two energy bars and a Red Bysen. “You want one?” he said, waving a bar. Dash nodded and he chucked it over to her.
The two stayed there, hovering for a few minutes. They couldn’t tell if they were staying level, going up or going down, so far off the ground it was impossible to really tell. But Dash always seemed to be drifting above Butterscotch. Whether that meant she was going up or he was going down wasn’t quite clear, either way she always kept flying down to meet him. Eventually they finished their bars and he finished his drink. He’d offered her one of the drinks as well but Dash declined. She always thought those things just tasted like orange flavoured coke and didn’t really like them.
The hovering had given Butterscotch time to recover, he could hover all day without effort so it was practically like they had been sitting down for the last few minutes. “Alright Dash let’s get going, I wanna make at least half way.” he said, trying to boast... only to remember that that wouldn’t work with Rainbow Dash as she’d actually made it there once before. Which became abundantly clear when she let out a small snicker. “Gee thanks for the encouragement…”
“Hehe, sorry. Let me just get one thing first.” she said as she flew over to him, reaching into his bag and grabbing out an energy bar. She unwrapped it took a single bite before just dropping it. “There, that’ll do...” she said, still chewing the bite. She then flipped a latch and sent Butterscotch’s bag, letting it slip from his back, falling just behind the half-eaten bar.
“What the hay Rainbow Dash!?”
Dash put her hoof to his face and pulled him from looking down at the falling bag to meet her gaze. “You want encouragement? That thing is just weighing you down and destroying your aerodynamics.”
“Yeah but…” he said, turning to look down at the falling supplies once more.
Dash turned his head to her again and added “I believe you can make it all the way to World’s End.” she said smiling, not noticing how close she was to his face. She pulled away and slowly started flying upwards again “So… you gonna let a filly beat you there?” and slowly picked up her speed.
“Not a chance!”