Necessary Love

by Zurock

Chapter 23: Anticipation

One more to recruit. Four would make a nice square number of players.

Drifting in the air above the beach, one hoof giving her chin a heavy rub, Rainbow Dash pondered some more over her choices. No way was she going to be able to tear an egghead like Twilight away from her study time with that stallion. Rarity was always a natural 'no' for something like volleyball; probably too afraid of getting a little sand on her hooves. Likewise none of the weird entourage which had devoted themselves to the prissy dressmaker looked like they would say 'yes' either. Fluttershy was obviously available, sitting serene and alone, but she wasn't a volleyball player... or a competitive sports player of any type really. Not far from her was some other guy – a real drab stallion with animals or something for a cutie mark – and he didn't seem to be too busy, but he had a real Fluttershy-like funk going on and probably wasn't a reliable choice. Besides all of them, maybe one of the random islanders who busied about the beach could fill in? Honestly though, they didn't feel like worthy choices either.

Dumb Applejack. What was her problem? Dumber still, she had stomped right into the ocean even though it was now clear that she hadn't REALLY wanted to go swimming. She was just sort of hiding out there in the water, taking lazy rolls with the waves as they splashed over her.

It would have been so great to have had her as a player, too! If there was anypony that was awesome to cut one's teeth against it was Applejack. Fun and fair, but also tough and fierce, she was a pony that was way rad to battle. But recently she NEVER wanted to do anything anymore!

Whatever. That killjoy wasn't going to get a second chance. Let her have some stupid fun getting all soaked and salty in the ocean with that chocolate stallion who was also out there. Rainbow Dash had OTHER friends whom she could rely on.

And, speak of the devil, she spotted one such friend at that exact moment!

Pinkie Pie had a snorkel hanging below her chin, water wings on her forelegs, flippers on her hooves, and an inner tube bound around her waist. It was a troublesome sign; hopefully she wasn't planning on going for a swim also. For the time being she was merely standing about, but maybe that blue pegasus next to her was trying to convince her to take a dip. After all, he was also wearing some similarly ridiculous accessories.

Rainbow Dash dove into action, swooping low before she zipped straight between her pink friend and the other pony. Shooting through, she then curved back around and parked herself in front of the unfazed ponies.

"Hey! What's up, everypony?"

"Hiya, Rainbow Dash," Pinkie Pie replied. She definitely hadn't hit peak Pinkie-ness, but she sounded way better than yesterday; healthier, and more colorful in every way.

Yet apparently her current partner, Hulahoof, was more Pinkie Pie than Pinkie Pie. He bounced in place excitedly, all the excessive inflatable swimwear on him screaming rubber screeches as they bobbed and jiggled. Up and down he kept going, and he greeted enthusiastically, "Hey hey! You here to join in?"

"Uhhh... no thanks. I don't feel like swimming," answered Rainbow Dash.

"Swim, hehe?" Pinkie Pie giggled.

"I'm not swimming!" the stallion joined in the laughter. "Are you swimming, Pinkie Pie?"

"I'm not swimming! Are you swimming, Rainbow Dash?"

The now-confounded pegasus rendered a dead reply of, "... No...?"

Hulahoof needled her in merry delight, "You need water to swim, silly-filly. I don't see any water here; just sand. Do you see any water, Pinkie Pie?"

"I see sand, too." She checked her hooves, finding them very un-wet and also covered in the dry micro-scratches typical of such loose grains of sand. "Do you see any water, Rainbow Dash?"

"I-... then-...," Rainbow Dash stammered, "... what-... what ARE you doing?"

"We're hitting the beach!" the stallion proudly informed her. Suddenly he bounded higher, straight up into the air, and then crashed his hooves as he came down in an earthquake of a landing. The strike scattered thin clouds of sand about.

Pinkie Pie grinned and then mimicked him, thumping the sand herself with enough wily energy to kick out even thicker clouds.

He went again, and then she, and before long they were both hopping about and bringing their hooves down like thunder. The grainy swishing of the flying sand nearly drowned out the ocean waves.

Rainbow Dash took a step back in order to dodge some of the particles that were blasting her way.

"... What?" she asked.

The other ponies both stopped their shenanigans, and Pinkie Pie stretched her neck all the way over to her friend.

"We're HITTING... the BEACH!" she said in slow motion. One of her hooves gave the sand another good, punishing thwack.

The rainbow pegasus narrowed her disbelieving eyes.

"... Really? I mean... REALLY?"

"Ya-huh!" the pink pony smiled, snapping her neck back. "It's a lot of fun! You should try it!"

"... If you're not swimming then... why are you wearing... that?" Rainbow Dash wildly gestured her hoof all over their unnecessary getup.

The two ponies glanced at each other, appalled by the absurd question, before they turned back to the doubting pegasus and answered her in clarifying unison, "It's thematically appropriate."

"That's great; look, I don't care anymore," Rainbow Dash groaned. She skittered up to Pinkie Pie, threw one leg around the pony, and then prodded her with a hoof. "I'm putting together a volleyball game, and I need YOU to play, Pinkie."

"Volleyball?! I'd love to!" the pink pony exclaimed. With one vigorous shake of her whole body she detached herself from Rainbow Dash and threw off most of her themed apparel. The inner tube needed a pop of its seal before it could go. It farted out its air and then she wiggled its shriveled husk down her body before she discarded it with a kick. "Can Hulahoof play too?"

Rainbow Dash hesitated, shifting uncomfortably like a spotlight was upon her. She remembered that Prism had offered to play if needed also, so technically a game of six players was possible. But having just witnessed the ferocious insanity that was PINKIE PIE IN STEREO had left the competitive pegasus secretly balking at the thought of including her friend's newest friend.

"I...," she elongated her leery response, looking for the right way to hide her declining intention, "... don't think I could take both of you. That's one too many, uh, players. Sorry."

Pinkie Pie put on a pouting frown and turned towards her stallion buddy, worried.

Hulahoof, dressed still in his ludicrous beachwear, endured a pang of disappointment. But quickly he shrugged it off and displayed a thin smile for the pink pony.

"Go on," he encouraged her. "Have a volley-BALL with your friend. There'll be plenty of time for us to have all sorts of big-time fun later."

His happy humility reversed Pinkie Pie's gloom, turning it into immediate cheer, and she said, "Aw! Thanks, Huly!"

"Nah, a billion thanks to you!" he returned, electric with delight. "I'm just happy-smiles-for-a-hundred-miles thrilled that today you actually came right up to me and I got to really meet you!" Little flakes of unfortunate misery fell from him in a drift as he lowered his head, and he reluctantly commented, "You, uh, seemed kind of power-bummed yesterday..."

The pink pony had no wish to revisit such an unwanted place, and she managed to steer away from any reminiscence via a twitchy smile and an unbalanced shout of, "Pinkie Pie is a happy friend!"

Hulahoof noticed no oddness about her assertion. He only pumped his knees elatedly and shouted, "I can see that now!"

His unhindered joy fast became hers, and it yanked her back to an authentic level of bubbliness immediately.

"I guess I'll see you after the game!" she told him.

"Sure!" the stallion accepted with impossible glee. "Or at lunch if that takes too long. Oh! We should super-definitely see each other at lunch cause I'm not going to be able to join you for the tour later..." A frown came upon him, but everything about it teetered on a pivot of phoniness.

The pink pony understood that something deliciously duplicitous was going on, and with no lack of light herself she responded, "Oh no! Why?"

"Because... I... need... that... time... to..."

Somewhere a drum rolled.

"... GET THIS EVENING'S PARTY READY!"

Pinkie Pie inhaled a hurricane with her gasp of genuine mock surprise.

"YAY!" she bellowed, leaping up and down.

The stallion joined in on her rejoicing dance, once again causing all of the swimwear on him to squeak and cheer as he bounced alongside her.

"Alright, alright, sheesh," Rainbow Dash brought them to a stop with her loud interruption. "It's going to be a great party, yeah yeah yeah. But volleyball first, okay?" To try and break them up faster she wedged herself between them and began to nudge Pinkie Pie away.

"I can't wait for the party!" the pink pony lobbed the comment over her rainbow friend to Hulahoof.

"I can't wait to find out what you think of my party!" the stallion replied.

"I can't wait to think things about your party which I can't wait for!"

"I ultra-can't wait for you to not have to wait to think things about my party which you can't wa-"

"YES, GREAT, NOPONY CAN WAIT!" cried Rainbow Dash, now actively shoving herself into Pinkie Pie with mighty force. "BUT I CAN'T WAIT FOR VOLLEYBALL SO LET'S GOOO!"

Moved only by the strenuous pushes of her friend, Pinkie Pie's stiff legs drew lines in the sand as she was carried away. But she was merry enough to giggle at the situation, and she threw a smile goodbye to her guidepony.

The bright smile left that pony with all the buzz of a pollen-drunk bee, and he was more than happy to return a goodbye in the same fashion. While the other two ponies continued off he returned to occupying himself with nonsense similar to what he had just shared with Pinkie Pie. But as he paraded about now he did so without any show of loneliness, and he hummed a loud song. Each bounce had him lighter than air even without using his wings.

Still being shoved along without lifting an ounce of her own weight the pink pony casually asked her sour friend, "So what do you think?"

"What?" Rainbow Dash grunted.

"Of Hulahoof! What do you think of him?"

"I don't know! I never met the pony!"

"Sure you did! Just now!"

"Oh. He's real whatever," the pegasus let the pointless conversation pass with impressive disregard. In the same moment she finally realized how senseless it was to carry on pushing her friend now that they had escaped. She stopped and, her patience beyond expired, she demanded, "Pinkie, could you like... take over?"

"Okie dokie lokie!"

At last the pink pony made some use of her own legs, whirring them to life. Rainbow Dash sighed, glad to be over the hump of her recruitment efforts, but her relief had only a short life. Pinkie Pie, instead of carrying forward towards the volleyball net, doubled back in the direction of Hulahoof. The freshly irritated pegasus growled her displeasure, but before she even had the chance to turn about and yell she was slammed from behind by a thick ball of curly, pink fuzz.

Drilling her head into Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie pushed. She had taken over as requested, swapping the role of 'shover' with her friend.

"I think he's nice!" she continued to talk about Hulahoof as if nothing had changed. "He's fun and happy and silly, and he likes parties and cupcakes and balloons, and he's really into to just being friends with everypony because who isn't into being friends with everypony? An everypony-friend-pony is positively the best kind of pony there is!" The force behind her bulldozing softened, and she more regretfully murmured, "I feel kind of bad about ignoring him so much yesterday. He was just trying to be my friend."

Rainbow Dash, surprisingly conscious of the subject matter being hinted at, tried to turn her neck around and look behind herself, saying, "It's not like you were TRYING to do that."

"Aw, but what difference does that make?" the pink pony whined.

"Pinkie, you were just... you know... not yourself."

The weakest push yet came from Pinkie Pie, and she muttered, "I'm not supposed to be myself to be HIS friend, but not-myself won't be friends with other ponies..."

"What'd you say?" croaked the pegasus. She was still throwing her head about in an effort to get a more direct line of sight to the pony behind her.

"... Pinkie Pie is a happy friend," the pink pony echoed distantly.

Finally Rainbow Dash dug her hooves into the sand, braking the pony train to a stop.

"Look, Pinkie," she spoke behind herself, still fussing with her neck to get a good look, "I know you're bugged about this whole 'friendship with James' thing, so that's part of why I picked you to play! We're going to start clearing that whole mess up right now with some good old volleyball!"

The pink pony froze. When she had been the one being shoved onwards she hadn't bothered to have glanced ahead at where they were going, and when she had become the pusher her battering ram of a head had been too lowered to have ever looked ahead to check. But one dreadful hint from her loyal friend was all that she had needed to spark her deepest fears, and she took her first dangerous peek around the pegasus.

A short distance beyond was the volleyball net, raised and secured in the sand flawlessly. Nearby the other two players were busy with loose warm-up stretches, and only ONE of them was a pony...

There was a sudden rush of collapsing air behind Rainbow Dash; a bursting pop as the wind raced to fill in a fresh void in space. Shaken by the unexpected movement, the pegasus threw her neck back as far as it would go, and she shortly realized that she couldn't find the pink pony anymore. Whether she cranked left or right she saw not a puff or splotch of pink behind her. Finally fed up with all the soreness her awkward position was introducing to her neck she whirled about in a snap.

Pinkie Pie hadn't disappeared at all. She had merely squished herself into a cowering ball, hiding from the volleyball game ahead by ducking behind the shape of her friend.

"Oh, not this again," the rainbow-maned pegasus griped.

"Aaaaaaa-I'm not ready to play, Rainbow Dash!" the frightened pony squealed. She seized the pegasus and held her like a shield, and again the pink pony poked out her head so that she could catch another nervous glimpse of the net awaiting her.

"Come on, this is perfect!" Rainbow Dash tried her frustrated best to thread a needle of encouragement. She pointed back at the man, himself unaware of the watching ponies, and she laid out her plan, "Now you can actually spend some time with him playing a simple game that he'll like, and you can be on the other side of the net the whole time! You won't have to say anything to him or like even deal with him face-to-face! This is exactly the kind of small little thing you should do to slowly warm up to him like I was telling you about! Just relax, don't go all crazy, enjoy yourself, and you'll do fine."

One last time Pinkie Pie stole a short and awful peek around her friend, but again she cringed down in hiding afterwards.

"I can't!" she cried, her pitch piercing so high that it was actually soft.

"Yeah you can! This isn't any different than a normal game of volleyball like we've played a million times!" The pegasus nearly glowered, trying not to be upset with her hurting friend but nonetheless tired of all the silliness. "You go nuts for any game where you get to smack a ball around!"

"I knooow!" the fear-filled reply came. Pinkie Pie's terrified energy shot through her legs and gave Rainbow Dash a powerful shaking, her eyes went wide and hollow, and her littlest voice squeaked with her darkest dream about how the whole event might turn out: "Pinkie LOVES volleyball..."

"Yeeeaaahhhh... sooo...," the pegasus shook her head and at last definitively insisted, "we're going to play. And I PROMISE that you'll be okay." And seeing as all the verbal encouragement in the world wouldn't have brought the crouching pink pony forward Rainbow Dash opted instead to again take over the job of pushing.

Paralyzed with fright the cowering Pinkie Pie put up only a paltry resistance. She leaned her body back as far as she could, hummed silent whines, and let her butt be dragged across the sand. When the two ponies drew close enough to gain the attention of the others even those tiny efforts of hers stopped. She petrified, locking up stiff as a board.

"Alright! Number four, right here!" Rainbow Dash announced, slotting the newest player before the others. Coming out from behind her frozen friend she stood next to the motionless pony and made a grand gesture with her hoof to unveil the last recruit. Not that the pink pony made much of an incredible display; she was sinking into the sand, and she wore on her face only an artificially wide smile.

"Now let's get this show on the road!" the rainbow pegasus said.

"Four?"

Nosedive came forward, having uttered the innocent question. In every way he was professional and deferring, trying hard not to imply any amount of disrespect with his inquiry. Silently he counted the players again just to be sure.

"A doubles game?"

Grinning at both him and James like the wicked awesome devil she was, Rainbow Dash replied confidently, "Yeah. How about girls versus guys? That way Pinkie doesn't-"

Very briefly she choked on her own tongue, though she was able to whip into a decent recovery. Pointing at James she declared instead, "That way YOU can't complain about not having a flyer on your side after I make you kiss the sand."

The man smirked, leveling overtly false accusation back at her, "It's a strange coincidence: YOU always make the rules and somehow YOU always end up winning. Huh, funny that."

"Keep telling yourself that!" the self-satisfied pegasus teased in return. Almost involuntarily her excited wings shot out and got up to speed, carrying her a step above the sand, and she shouted, "Now somepony toss me the ball and let's do this thing!"

She buzzed off to her chosen side of the net, taking a flight route that involved a few unnecessary twirls and loops. Yet in short order she had to return anyway just to drag Pinkie Pie there too, as the latter pony had stayed frozen in place with her unflinching smile.

James tilted an awkward eye towards the pink pony. Such stony behavior was surely one of her innumerable and arbitrary quirks; probably her ludicrous flavor of the day or whatever. What a loon. But whatever; as long as Rainbow Dash was fine with having such a teammate then why should he have cared? Certainly her own behaviors showed that the pegasus believed everything was alright. Twilight worried too much.

A bizarre sensation flitted through him when he realized that he couldn't tell whether the pink pony was actually staring back at him or not. Her blue bubbles were so vacant. He turned away.

Nosedive had the volleyball nestled between his wings, having retrieved it with calm obedience as soon as the word had been given. Wandering up to the net from his implicitly assigned side he used one wing to make an offering of the ball to Rainbow Dash.

"Hey, alright, thanks!" she appreciated his effort in earnest as she eagerly zipped forward and plundered the ball from him, passing it to her wing from his.

"You're welcome," he shot his response out fast, and he raced to squeeze in, "and very quickly I should introduce myse-"

But the guest pegasus was already too absorbed in testing her own dexterity, showboating her skills to herself as a means of justifying her own confidence. She rolled the volleyball back and forth over her wings, gave it a daring toss or two, and even balanced it on her nose deftly. Once finished her wings snatched the ball tight with a triumphant clap, and she directed an energetically cocky grin at Nosedive.

"Haha, you better take your last moments to get ready," she unleashed her most competitive taunting, "cause once this starts you're going DOWN!" Her stare turned frisky and sinister, hungering for the game to begin, and she dared, "Give me your best shot!"

Off she turned, blasting into position. But the stallion only treaded a few loose steps backwards.

"'Best shot?'" he wondered.

Perhaps he had misjudged this encounter. He hadn't soaked himself in nearly enough preparation.

Like driving in railroad spikes he thrust his hooves into the sand, securing himself. One at a time he lifted each leg, giving them purposeful pushes; easing them out as far as they would go before he pulled them back to relaxation. He ran through orderly repetitions of the same action a number of times before he moved on to flexing his wings with the same extreme precision. And so on he continued with each critical part of his body. Every little exercise bore the perfect mark of crisp practice and professional training, light years beyond an ordinary morning warm-up and more like a regiment built for a championship.

Meanwhile James exercised nearly nothing on that sort of level. He had taken an easy walk to his side of the net and then he had started on only little things which were meant to ensure that his muscles were warm. It was a plan no different than preparing for any other playful game with Rainbow Dash; behaviors he had eventually learned over the prior months. The whole affair was, to him, very similar to the roughhousing he had occasionally gotten up to with his friends of old.

But he paused his lazy preparations when he felt the medallion around his neck slap his chest after a small hop. His fingers seized it and he twiddled it about, thinking. It wasn't in his character to value the crystal blossom for its beauty, and on that level he couldn't have cared less about wearing his 'jewelry' for the game. But the item's true worth came from something far more meaningful, and if the necklace were to take any damage because he fumbled the ball or took a poor dive then that would have been a travesty.

"Hey, Prism," he said.

Quite attentive, the mare sitting nearby was already looking at him before he had even called to her.

"Hang onto this for me, please."

Withdrawing the necklace he held it out and jingled it once before he tossed it at her.

As expected her magic gently caught his treasure, and with appropriate care she happily set it down next to herself.

"Good luck!" she smiled and nodded at him. In her seat she shuffled slightly, easing into greater comfort as a spectator set to savor the show.

Once more James returned to honing his readiness through a dozen automatic micro-tasks. Between the tiny stretches of his arms, the popping of his shoulders, and kicking his feet into the sand to test its feel, he thought about perhaps talking the smallest amount of strategy with his stranger of a partner. There was hardly a need to assemble the generals and lay out the war plans, but at the very least it would have been good to know how they respectively planned to space themselves instead of just relying on their instincts.

It threw him through a hoop of surprise when he glanced over and caught sight of Nosedive's intense and methodical warm-ups.

"Relax a little," the man recommended while stepping closer, keeping a moderate tone though otherwise obviously amused.

At first the busy pony scarcely recognized that he was even being talked to. He had to shake his head to snap his mind out the concentrated focus which imprisoned it, and afterwards he halted his stretches and stood up straight.

"I'm sorry," he answered his teammate. Everything he said came out in a mumble stained with such lamentable guilt, half-second-guessing himself the whole way. "This is for fun, right? Not even an exhibition match. Shouldn't take it so seriously..."

"Oh, well, I mean, WE shouldn't, yeah," James chuckled. He tapped his head towards Rainbow Dash and admitted honestly, "But SHE'S going to be serious. She's going to go all out and wreck us, like always. That's just the way playing games with her turns out. So I say: chill, enjoy the ride, and have some fun." There was no mistaking how serious the man was with his estimate, but he showed his ease with his fate through a simple shrug.

Conflicted, Nosedive paused. Some of his posture crumbled.

"... Does...," he at last spoke up, questioning the man with tender caution, "... does she enjoy... winning like that?"

"What? Sure, I guess," James weakly returned. Largely he didn't understand what had been asked.

"I mean...," the stallion was hesitant to articulate, "... would she prefer that, or... would she like a challenge more?"

Still his question resembled an unlabeled box: something undeclared was inside, but it needed to be opened up and dug through to be found. And there was hardly the time for that.

"Good or bad, she'll be happy as long as you don't fake your effort," the man related, as succinct and resolute as he could.

Nosedive seemed to nod with understanding, yet he still tested an uncertain glance at Rainbow Dash.

"... Yes, but...," he tried again, "... is the best course-"

"Look," James said, weaving together apology and explanation, and only delicately hinted with exasperation, "I didn't mean to suggest that you SHOULDN'T give this game your everything if you REALLY want to. Like, if that's the way you enjoy your sports then don't let me stop you from having a good time." He pointed past the net at the pegasus of interest; she was waiting for them to be ready, impatiently juggling the volleyball with supernatural ease. "SHE'S going to go to the extreme cause that's just what she's like. And I don't imagine most ponies are quite the same. So I was just saying: don't fret about going hoof-to-hoof with her if that meant you wouldn't have any fun."

Deciding to exercise his own advice to the utmost degree, the man abandoned any talk of strategy and spaced himself out on his own. It didn't matter to him if he and Nosedive improvised successfully or floundered about in hilarious failure. It'd be a good game regardless.

"She IS a lot of a fun," the man expressed, "and part of what makes her that way is the fact that... well, take my advice: you don't NEED to keep up with her."

---

It had taken a stroke of keen foresight for Gallowayo to have brought along a box heavy with paperweights. Before long he and Twilight had papers scattered everywhere, organized into numerous related or unrelated piles, and they nailed each stack or folder to their large blanket with paperweights taken again and again from the seemingly endless supply. It kept the wind from stealing away with any of the documents – at least those which weren't bound in books – and there was no shortage of need for the solid weights. The more the two ponies read, the more piles they needed to create in order to keep their volumes of finished history sensibly straight.

Unfortunately, as time passed, it seemed increasingly clear that the paperweights' great utility was being wasted on something so utterly insignificant.

"Gah!" Twilight huffed, scooting yet another paper she had finished into its appropriate pile. "There's NOTHING here!"

Gallowayo looked up from the page he was reading.

"It's like Venus and Vesuvius have always said," he shrugged. "If there was ever any documentation about the old islanders, very little of it survived."

"I know they talked about how sparse any information was," the purple unicorn complained, "but I didn't think that there'd be so... LITERALLY nothing."

The other pony hummed and nodded. His attention was evenly divided between his own studies and Twilight's griping.

"Like this one," her magic grabbed a recent packet of pages from one of the piles and waved it around. "This is the travel log of a trading vessel, and the ONLY THING highlighted in all eleven pages is a single unremarkable mention of them passing by the island on their route. No stop; no observations. Just a recording of their route which swung around the island. That's IT. And the upsetting thing is that records like this are MORE detailed than most of these!"

In a annoyed huff she flung the floating pages down on top of an incorrect pile.

With his own magic Gallowayo picked up the wrongly laid papers and gently moved them to where they belonged, sifting them back under the proper paperweight.

"I've found the same thing so far," he said calmly. "I've never looked through this stuff before, and I'm ALSO surprised at just how... right Venus and Vesuvius were. Hard to believe that a civilization which existed for centuries could have been so insular as to leave so little behind."

Twilight blew out some frustrated air, buzzing her lips.

"Hundreds of years and nopony LEAVES the island!" she groaned. "Hundreds of years and nopony VISITS the island!"

"Well, not quite," Gallowayo reminded her.

"I know," she said, trying to bring back her professional decorum. "Venus told me the story about a mare from the island found adrift, and how they took her to Galloloupe. I actually found that record," again her magic snared one of the already-read items, this time a folder, and she opened it to show him the pages within, "but there really isn't all that much to gleam from it."

Surprised enough to lower the record he was studying, the stallion responded, "I've never heard that story."

Twilight twisted an intrigued eye at him.

"What I was going to say," he continued, "was that it's possible ponies DID visit island; maybe they just never left to write any record of it. Sort of like how so many of us stay here now after we come for the first time."

"That's true...," the purple unicorn mused, casting her eyes down at the blanket and tapping her chin with her hoof. "I hadn't thought of that..."

Gallowayo carefully intruded upon her thoughts, taking the faintest magical tug at the folder her own magic still held.

"Can I have a look at that one, please?"

"Oh! Of course."

The folder's glow traded colors, and the stallion brought it before himself. He shuffled what he had already been reading back into the small pile it had come from, but then he floated that whole stack towards Twilight.

"Here, you might be interested in this," he said. "It's the log from the first group of ponies to set hoof on this island AFTER the disappearance of the native islanders. There's not much I'm afraid, same as any of these, but it's the most extensive record I've found of the ones I've looked through."

Twilight took hold of his offering, cautiously fascinated by the announcement of his find. Their items exchanged, both buckled down for some minutes of dead-silent reading while the beach stayed alive with activity around them.

Since he had the shorter selection Gallowayo finished first. Patiently he waited, taking less scrutinous looks over other papers to pass the time. In only a few extra minutes Twilight had caught up and set down her pages.

"So, what do you think?" the stallion asked in rapid eagerness.

Twilight delayed, and then said, "You first."

A bit humbled that SHE would defer to HIM, he took a fast moment to review his thoughts before he conjectured, "It's hard to say anything except speculation. They brought this pony back to their home but, at least as recorded here, she never gave up a word of her experiences. I don't know... The fact that the lost island mare never mixed in with Galloloupe culture; maybe she wasn't ready to move on?"

"But then why never ask to be brought back to Isla Equufera?" the other unicorn fired the obvious counterpoint.

"It's kind of a paradox, yeah," he admitted, "but that's what I took out of it." He gave a hopeful look to Twilight and asked, "You're a friendship expert. What would keep a pony from making new friends if they got severed from their old ones?"

At first Twilight puffed up, raised high by his earnest praise. However her mood quickly deflated. His question was an unintentional reminder of unhappier times. The image came before her of James at his lowest point, curled up in a corner in the library where he had locked himself away from Equestria.

"The lost mare WAS able to go back...," the purple unicorn churned through her thoughts aloud, "... but she CHOSE not to. Yet she didn't readily jump into the new world she found herself in..."

"Okay... but what makes a pony do something like that?" Gallowayo wondered.

Again she thought of James.

"... A trauma? Bad enough that she didn't go back even though she could've? Even if she really wanted to?"

The speculation squeezed the stallion's face tight.

"That'd have to be a SERIOUS trauma," he said. "Maybe something connected to whatever had left her stranded at sea? Like a fear of the water?"

"Maybe...," Twilight murmured in doubt. "Nothing in there left me with that impression. I feel like it was more about the island itself."

"Huh," Gallowayo chirped. He tilted his head and shook it, poring over his own distantly-related experiences at the island. "Can't imagine why."

"That we even have to use so much of our imaginations is part of the problem here," the other unicorn lamented.

"Hm?" He snapped back to the present, hiding the color in his cheeks. "Oh! Yes, very true."

The jarring inattentiveness inherent in his response pushed Twilight into a dumb stare.

"So," the stallion moved on, racing to inquire about the documents he had traded to her, "what do you think about Captain One Shot's log?"

"It's interesting. Not in an enlightening way," she replied, greatly displeased.

"Well, it really demonstrates just how extreme the old islanders' isolation was," he commented. "I mean, the expedition couldn't tell whether the last of them had vanished five years before or a hundred years before!"

"Yeah..." Twilight hung her head, disappointed with the thought. Yet swiftly she popped herself back up, jolted by a sudden objection, and she questioned Gallowayo, "With all those unknown years between contact, is 'vanish' really the right word?"

He held silent for a few thinking seconds before he only noted, "You're holding a copy of the very first record to have been written by outsiders who actually set hoof on the island and saw it with their own eyes. And they didn't find much at all."

"Much that they WROTE about," she amended his statement, turning his earlier idea around on him.

"That's true...," the green unicorn mused, reflecting identical humility to that which she had earlier shown. "I hadn't thought of that..."

Twilight carefully intruded upon his thoughts, soliciting his wisdom gently, "Any reason you can think of for why they might have concealed their findings?"

Again he stayed quiet as he ruminated. When he at last responded he didn't sound terribly convinced of himself. His guess had an endless number of gloomy shadows murking it, battling the logical light he was trying to cast.

"... They... were disturbed by what they found?"

A dull hum rose from Twilight. She had herself pondered the same possibility, and in some ways had been hoping for him to have casually eradicated her distressing conclusion by producing a more sound one.

"But that doesn't REALLY make sense," Gallowayo already tried to dismantle his guess. "Other expeditions came later, not the least of which was the big one the Island Society sent more recently with Venus and Vesuvius, and then those two's own extensive efforts! None of them ever found anything... unsettling."

"I guess so...," the purple unicorn sighed. Dismally she dropped the log records she was still holding, joining it with other worthless documents under the right paperweight.

The relative failure their ongoing research efforts had thrown a terrible pall over her mood. Her dejection was especially noticeable to Gallowayo given the way it contrasted to when he had earlier seen her freshly awake; little disordered and dreamy before, sure, but also so bright, cute, and ready.

Feeling somewhat responsible for the change, even if unjustly, he tried to restore some of her beautiful vitality by suggesting, "You'll have a great opportunity to throw all of your questions at Venus and Vesuvius when they take you on the tour after lunch."

It did perk her up, at least a little bit.

"That's right," she remembered. But the memory of last night's dinner and all she had already asked weighed her down, and she said, "I'm not sure how much more they'd be able to tell us. I mean, for all of their efforts here they seem to know so very little themselves."

"Still," he replied, "they know more than us. And maybe you've gleamed enough here to pull something interesting out of them."

Again Twilight appeared conservative about her chances, her mouth crumbling down as she rocked her head back and forth in a dreary way. At dinner the hosts had been very reluctant to have talked about the history in any extensive amount. Actually they had put in quite some effort to have dodged the specifics of the topic. Perhaps they were so disappointed about the dearth of known facts too...

"I suppose," she remarked nonetheless. "And if anything, four minds are even better than two, so with the both of us questioning them-"

"Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be there for the tour," a wounded Gallowayo apologized.

And as a happy surprise to him Twilight in turn also appeared hurt by the news.

"You're not?"

"No," he shook his head.

He was cycling through a chain of uncomfortable reactions: sorrow for the reality of his future absence, delight for the noticeable impression he had made on the mare, guilt for secretly rejoicing about his progress during such a sullen moment, and fright for how much of a fool he probably looked like while trying to manage his many whirling emotions.

"I, uh-... Well, there's-... After lunch, I need to, uh-... I need the time to, ah..." He coughed in his throat. "... practice."

"Practice?"

"Yeah, um..." He wasn't ashamed; merely off-center and unprepared. "With-... with the band."

The new information was so out of place that it took a moment to sink into Twilight's brain, but once it did she lit up with curious glee.

"You're in a band? Really?" she smiled.

"Ever since I came here, yeah," answered Gallowayo, his nerves steeling up now that he saw her bright response. He quickly grew more and more enthused as he explained his history to her, "I mean, I've always written music and songs. And I mean WRITTEN; like, scribbled it down just for the fun of it, kept it to myself and everything. But I took a much greater interest in the whole thing when I came here because Venus and Vesuvius found out about my tiny hobby and... sort of pushed me into showcasing my music. They got some of the others to back me up and... I don't know, I figured I'd actually give PERFORMING a shot. So long story short, well... now I'm the official stage entertainment here, and I'll be singing at the party tonight!"

Twilight held her hoof over her mouth and giggled. She apologized to him for the seemingly disrespectful response, saying, "I'm sorry; I don't mean to be rude! You just don't seem like the singer type to me!"

"That's fine!" the stallion burst out laughing, completely at ease. "Not long ago I would have agreed with you! Never in my life had I performed on stage; not until I came here and started singing for the band."

The solidness of that particular detail astounded her, and she asked, "What, really? Never?"

"Never, ever," he confirmed. "I mean I've always sung my stuff to get the tune figured out; like, sung in head, or softly to myself. But never before had I performed publicly. The thought of being up on stage like that used to frighten me stiff. But ever since they convinced me to try getting up there..."

His audience was listening raptly, and being so aware of her keen attention made him excited. The color swarmed into his face, he dropped his gaze, and his words started to stagger as he tried to assemble the right description. The island had rendered such a wonderful change in him that he had even gained the strength to have made the brave leap onto the stage, but what exactly the full experience was like was still something so undefinable.

"When you're up there and everypony's eyes are on you, you think you're going to feel so... self-aware, and scared. In fact it always DOES feel like that at first. You haven't even started and you're so covered in sweat because of how nervous you are. But then everything begins and there's-... there's this ENERGY that appears out of nowhere. It floods the air; it drowns you, slowly without you realizing it at first. I mean, the lights are hot and boiling; you're ON FIRE. And the music ramps up, blurring to just a huge noise that's so loud it pounds through the stage and right into YOUR BODY, making you jump. And every last FIBER in you becomes so sensitive; you can FEEL it; feel EACH AND EVERY TIME your pulse THROBS. And when it actually comes time to SING... you CAN'T STOP YOURSELF from making the noises. Everything engages, and it justs COMES OUT; you feel that POWER flowing through you. It's like-... like-... like you change; like all of you changes; all of you TRANSFORMS. You become this rocket that... blasts off with more energy than you've EVER IMAGINED you could have, and you can't stop moving even if you wanted to, and your mind can't stop thinking about nothing and everything all at once, and the soaring doesn't end until you suddenly crash and explode."

Twilight was absolutely fascinated, though the vivid image he had been trying to create hadn't been what had fully grasped her. More enticing was how his words had been bound by very loose connections; he had painted a picture that felt so incomplete, but of a mystery not completely indiscoverable. Most compelling of all was how thoroughly he had devoted himself to trying to express his mind. He was shivering from tail to nose. Something so real and powerful was inside him, making him shake like that. Even if he couldn't describe it with sufficient precision he adored it regardless; bathed himself in it. He wanted to live in it forever.

Gallowayo took a few needed breathes, almost gasping. Air charged with electricity passed in and out through his awestruck smile. He couldn't sum the experience up except to say, "... It's so AMAZING."

"You certainly make it sound that way!" the purple unicorn responded, quite happy and enchanted. "I never would have imagined describing being a performer in terms like that!"

"Me too, at first," he said. He was still awash with trembling energy. "But now that I've discovered it I can't stop. Writing those songs and performing them is one of my avenues of expression; probably the most important one of all now. I mean, that feeling you get when you're on the stage... all that power... all those sensations... That's THE CLOSEST thing there is to what it feels like to-"

Something bite him and he snapped up, very aware of Twilight all of a sudden. A nervous cold swept into him, blowing out all the heat that had previously dominated; not a radiator turned off but one burst from a flash coating of ice. His stare shrank, his pupils crushed by his whites.

"-to... to, uh-... feels like to-...," he dribbled, hardly coherent. A shake of his head and a hard reseating of his rump brought some slight sturdiness back to him, but he finished his thought with only mellow, lifeless, dismissing words, "... to, you know... be-, be in love, I guess."

The other pony cocked her head, blinking her eyes once slow.

"That... sounds like quite a turbulent romance."

"Well, nopony ever knew it could be such a wild thing...," he answered, though having not actually intended to have opened his mouth.

Again Twilight was puzzled, and she asked, "Gallowayo... are you alrigh-"

Overpowering her question he suddenly beamed, "I'm really looking forward to hearing what you think about my songs! Venus and Vesuvius, along with most of the other ponies, really enjoy them and everything, but so few of them 'get' what I'm trying to say with them. That's why I've been so excited for your coming. You're very intelligent, and with all your studies of friendship you're so much more invested in understanding how ponies feel about each other. You care about this in a way that nopony else does. I knew the instant I read your essay that you'd be a pony I'd want to share this with. You'd understand."

The purple unicorn held quiet for several long seconds. The jumpy turns to his outward character were certainly odd. It was an observation she had made yesterday too: the way his confidence soared until it suddenly plummeted, and vice versa. He moved powerfully between things.

But in the end she wasn't troubled by his idiosyncrasies. She was instead most touched by the open faith he put in her, and by his obvious adoration for studious ability.

"I can't wait," she softly smiled.

Gallowayo couldn't help but smile as well, his cheeks puffing a little with tender warmth as his inner-reflection calmed and he woke up to a lucky reality.

"I'm really glad to hear that... I've been looking forward to this for weeks." He twinged mildly, suspecting he had sounded perhaps too forward and also believing that the sum of his recent behaviors probably hadn't presented the most impressive picture of a normal or interesting pony. He was still hopeful, but the repetitive wiggles of his nervousness forced him to defend himself with a weak coda of, "Not to, uh... sound weird, or anything."

"It doesn't sound weird at all," she pleasantly assured him. She even released a small laugh, tickled by her own thoughts. So he had a desire to share his more personal musing with somepony else? It was no unusual thing for her to sit down and enjoy a lengthy conversation with another pony about close, strange, foreign, or uncomfortable topics! Certainly not after all the time she had spent doing exactly that with James! Between her own innate love of knowledge and all of her practice with the man she had been hardened enough to have been able to handle anything! In the debates with her human friend there hadn't existed a subject which she wouldn't have approached openly.

Well... ALMOST. There were things that had been hard to talk about... and... maybe some things that hadn't been talked about at all. B-But the one most recently denied subject had been a v-very reasonable exception! The M-MOST reasonable exception!

"Really?" Gallowayo burst into her thoughts. He sounded quite soothed. "It's such a relief to have somepony to talk with about all these mysteries on my mind; somepony who'll listen."

"I'm happy to," Twilight answered truthfully.

But the stallion continued, speaking very candidly.

"Sometimes here it's like I'm somepony from another world, and everything I see is through a completely different lens from everypony else. I've been glad to get to know all the ponies here; they're nice... but most of them just don't want to explore these things I feel so deeply. So to have somepony around who'll talk, who'll listen, who'll try to understand, who'll try to get on the same wavelength... it eases that silent sort of loneliness that creeps into you even when there's good company around. To be a little more understood by somepony else... it kind of helps you understand yourself, you know?"

He looked to Twilight for a comment or answer, but he was distraught to see that something about his message had disquieted her. By all appearances her thoughts had become fixed inwards, with her senses unaware of him or the rest of the world.

"Yeah...," she spoke up after a moment, "... I... know someone who probably feels exactly like that..."

"... Twilight?"

She blinked her way back to the present.

"It's nothing," the purple unicorn came around with a warm face, convincing him as well as herself of her own sincerity. "It sounds like there's plenty to look forward to for this evening then. But in the meantime... I guess that means I'll be on my own to confront Venus and Vesuvius during the tour, huh?"

Gallowayo gave a soft chuckle, "Yeah. Sorry."

"Oh, that's no problem," she insisted. "We just better make sure we pull everything out of these papers that we possibly can and then pool our knowledge!"

"Right," the stallion agreed. His magic started sorting through his nearest pages again, trying to find his place.

Twilight happily picked out more work for herself as well, but not before she promised him, "And later I'll be sure to share with you everything I learn from them!"

---

Perfectly set up, the volleyball practically hovered dead center over the net while it spun in the air. Nosedive, his dark gold wings spread for a lightning glide, put his best into soaring towards it. One well-placed strike would slice the ball through the other team's defenses and nab a sorely-needed point.

His hoof swung down hard, but mere inches shy of landing the blow the ball was pounded first by a rainbow wind that surged up from miles away. The burning ball bypassed the unready stallion, lured James into an unsuccessful dive which put him flat on his chest, and in the end skipped across the sand leaving a soft crater behind.

"YYYEEESSS!" Rainbow Dash yelled as she zipped back up from her superior spike. "THAT'S GAME!"

"Well played," Nosedive said, bringing himself to a gentle landing before the net.

The game had started slow but as it had worn on the stallion had in actual fact wound up putting some of his best effort into it, and still she had outperformed him with relative ease. Though a disappointing result in natural ways, he largely felt unsurprised; she was supposed to be that good, after all. Really, now that he had personally witnessed her athletic talent he had no qualms describing it as awe-inspiring.

He began to congratulate her, "Thank you for-"

"HAHA, IN YOUR FACE!"

Rainbow Dash had her hoof thrust into the net, stretching the mesh as she pointed at the defeated party. She was still in the air, kept up by the victorious energy bounding through her whipping wings, and even her sneering had less of an aggressive heat and more of an overcharged triumph to it.

"YOU THOUGHT YOU'D TAKE IT IN THE EARLY GAME BUT YOU WEREN'T READY FOR THE FULL POWER OF THE INVINCIBLE RAINBOW DASH! BOO-YAH!"

"Keep building yourself up, Thunder-butt," James teased her with equal force, standing again and dusting the sand off of his chest. "It'll only make your inevitable fall that much sweeter."

"Hah!" the laughing pegasus gloated, "Guess you don't know the meaning of 'invincible,' do you, Hay-for-brains?"

She swooped her way through a victory loop before she dove in front her teammate, and hovering there she held a leg out towards her friend.

"Gimme hoof, Pinkie!"

As far as the pink pony had been involved the game hadn't started out so dynamically. At the beginning her butt had never lifted off of the sand; Rainbow Dash had pushed her into place on the appropriate side of the net, and during the first rallies she had stayed there like a cast anchor. No flying ball or changing score had motivated her to so much as disturb a grain of sand.

Her wholesale inaction had made the game into an effective two-versus-one match which had allowed James and Nosedive a lead in points. Their lead had never grown terribly large though, owing to Rainbow Dash's impressive ability to carry her team well entirely on her own. Any generous effort by winning side to question or address the unfairness of the situation had been fast shut down by the rainbow pegasus; her hope had been to have hidden the problem underneath an impenetrably dense lack of acknowledgment.

But then, around the thirteenth rally, there had been the tiniest change. Another shot had swiftly cleared the net while Rainbow Dash had been too busy recovering from her last return, and the ball had been falling towards the paralyzed Pinkie Pie. Yet again it had seemed like another free point for the other team. But then to the surprise of all, the weakest movement had come from the pink pony when she hoisted her backside slightly off the sand. With a short reach her limp hoof had then tapped the airborne ball.

It hadn't been much of a hit; the ball had still crashed into the sand after her ineffectual play. But it had been the start of a change that had only grown stronger as the game had continued.

Never during the match had she exploded in vibrant giggles, or bounded in irrepressible joy, or walloped the volleyball in a comically exaggerated strike, but serve after serve she had participated with more and more life. In time she had been returning shots with appreciable accuracy, bouncing the ball with hoof or nose, and later still she had begun on occasion setting her partner up for powerful attacks.

With actual backup to support Rainbow Dash, as well as to cover any infrequent mistakes, the pegasus had been allowed to quickly take control of the game. It hadn't been long before the slightly lopsided scores had rapidly reversed, and the former losing team had rocketed to victory.

But that hadn't been all. Towards the end of the game, in just a bare few rare moments, there had appeared meager smiles on the pink pony's face.

Now one of the victors, Pinkie Pie looked up at Rainbow Dash and the outstretched hoof she offered. One more lucky moment was notched as the pink pony generated another short, simple, tiny smile. She raised up her own hoof and delivered a languid but celebratory tap; a faint, squishy, but affirming clop.

The feel of the weak hit finally pulled the pegasus away from her own self-glorification. Her wings tenderly brought her down to the ground, and she threw a leg around her friend in a sincere, shoulder-to-shoulder half-hug.

"Good game, Pinkie."

"Heh... Thank you..."

"So, is that it?" James asked loudly from his side of the net. "Or are we doing a rematch?"

Back to form, Rainbow Dash laughed, "What, are you that desperate to be defeated again already?"

"Just asking," the man shrugged, hiding his silliness for a moment in order to speak honestly. He tossed a temporary, quizzical glance at Pinkie Pie before he focused again on the pegasus and said, "I'm down if you are, I guess."

She scrutinized her pink friend quickly. The other pony lowered her eyes and shivered so scantly as to not be seen. The pegasus felt the miniature shake through her hooked leg, and even it wasn't a rocking tremble it was still clear that the pink pony was beset by an unplaceable sort of exhaustion.

"Nah," Rainbow Dash said as she extracted herself from Pinkie Pie. "Believe it or not I think one butt-whooping is enough for today."

James nodded then looked off at Prism, still an avid spectator who had her eyes on the sweating man.

"Yeah, I think I feel the same," he said. "Thanks for the game."

"Hey!"

Rainbow Dash sprinted over, crossing under the net so that she could hold a hoof out to him too.

"Thanks for playing."

Recognizing one of her true displays he gave her hoof his best pound of friendship.

After a trade of casual goodbyes the man departed to rejoin Prism; the unicorn delightedly floated his perfectly preserved necklace to him as he approached. Rainbow Dash meanwhile turned back, intent on returning to Pinkie Pie to support her downcast friend.

"Quite a game."

In surprise Rainbow Dash jumped towards the voice, having not noticed a single hint of Nosedive's plain approach. Her flinch only caused him to flinch as well.

"Your performance was amazing," he said, valiantly trying to smooth over the awkward moment. But he hardly helped himself when he raised his hoof up to her in a fairly blatant and ill-delivered mimicry of all the friendly exchanges of gratitude that had been going around. "Thank you," he added unsteadily.

"Oh. Yeah, sure," the colorful pegasus acknowledged with minimal effort. The whole thing really seemed like the most forced exchange ever. She politely gave his hoof a fast tap just to get it over with. "Thanks for playing."

"Thank you. Uh, again," he croaked.

"Right... so... later."

Rainbow Dash turned about and once more began to walk towards Pinkie Pie.

"Uh, Miss Rainbow Dash!" Nosedive chased after her a step, trying again to properly introduce himself for the first time. "Uh, may I-... ah..."

She stopped. Her sole intent was still to attend to her pink friend, and so she granted him only the most cursory attention. At the earliest sign of his uncertain stammering – at the very first dented word – she short-circuited the boring exchange by interrupting, "Game's done and we're not playing again, so yeah, if you want to take down the net then sure, go for it."

"I-"

"Thanks a bunch."

Leaving the distraction behind Rainbow Dash returned to the quiet Pinkie Pie. The pink pony had sat back down in the sand, stewing in an unusually obvious amount of deep thought.

"So hey, that went pretty well!" the pegasus said in an upbeat voice.

"I... guess...," the other pony replied in a tone so very opposite.

"Hey, come on," Rainbow Dash tried to sound as relaxed and positive as possible, "you got to play a regular old friendly game of volleyball with him, nothing went wrong, AND you had fun, right?"

"I... guess...," she answered again. Then her little fears spoke up, "... but it kind of felt like all the parties and the baking and the everything I've done with him before. Only-... only... this time PINKIE PIE wasn't genuine..."

The pegasus pulled back with gaping eyes, alarmed at the strange choice of words. Quickly she shook off her surprise and resumed her reinforcing arguments.

"What? No, come on, you had fun. I mean, it was different, and you took a little while to get going, but you had fun. I saw you smile!"

"I... guess I kind of did...," Pinkie Pie almost lamented.

"See?" her friend insisted, "It's just something that has to happen slowly and carefully. I know that's not your style, or mine either really, but if you warm up to him bit by bit instead of Pinkie-ing all over him then eventually he'll warm up to you too. You just got to be a little patient; it's going to take TIME."

The pink pony held still, keeping her face pointed down. In a whisper she let out what she had been mulling over for the past few minutes.

"... But Hulahoof wants to be friends NOW..."

Yet again Rainbow Dash was astonished at her friend's specific words, and with her suspicious eyebrow parked high she asked, "Since when do YOU compare your friends?"

But the other pony stood up and turned away from pegasus, net, and game. She started to wander back in the more carefree direction she had originally come from; a direction down which a stallion still dressed in ridiculous beachwear was goofing off. And as she went she mumbled.

"Pinkie Pie is a happy friend..."

Comments

[wlam]

Twilight carefully intruded upon his thoughts, soliciting his wisdom gently, "Any reason you can think of for why they might have concealed their findings?"

Again he stayed quiet as he ruminated. When he at last responded he didn't sound terribly convinced of himself. His guess had an endless number of gloomy shadows murking it, battling the logical light he was trying to cast.

"... They... were disturbed by what they found?"

Hmm. It seems we're getting to the part about this that's actually unsettling. What, exactly, could disturb people about finding an abandoned civilization of sex-worshippers and their aphrodisiac plant? And what could have made them die out? I think we're going to find out a lot of stuff about the side-effects of that Passion substance that are less than savoury or pleasant. Either about the things does to you... or about the things it makes you do.

[Hallucination]

6739007 Death by snu-snu?

[wlam]

6742726
That'd be one of the least horrifying options I can think of right now.

[Hallucination]

6742823 Maybe the drug makes them have sex so much it gets boring, and then they start turning into Cenobites.

[Danger Noodle]

Oh, looks like I finally caught up. Interesting story. Your RD is as much of a hate-able character as she is in the show (to me), except when she suddenly decides to think about those around her.

[Zurock]

6773589
I like all six of the primary characters, but I can roughly divide them into two tiers: a "higher" tier (Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy) and a "lower" tier (Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie.) The only thing that makes the second tier "lower" to me is that I find their character flaws slightly more grating than those in the "higher" tier. That is, it's a well done show in how it rounds its characters and as such all of them have their strengths and weaknesses, but I basically find the weaknesses in the lower tier to be more annoying character traits. Compare, say, Twilight's anxiety versus Rarity's vanity: to me anxiety is a much more sympathetic flaw than vanity.

Rainbow Dash's big flaw is obviously excessive pride, something I do find very irritating in people. However, as far as developing a story goes, I've found out that it's a fairly easy-to-use tool since it works exactly like you've said: it's a straightforward stumbling block which naturally inhibits her fundamentally good character but fades quickly whenever she can finally realize a friend is in need. The nature of the trait is to act like whimsical blinders.

[Jack Kellar]

Shoot. I wasn't expecting Pinkie to put Hulla on a pedestal, but it's easy to see that coming in hindsight. He is the ideal of her normal personality after all...

Yeesh. I don't remember Jim being such a dick to the point of only thinking of Pinkie as a freak. Someone's gotta slap some sense into that dumbshit right now, and I don't mean just metaphorically.

[KvAT]

6781847
I agree, he's stubborn to a fault. At least see the change in demeanor and notice something odd, like jeez how thick can one be? Twilight could've helped too if she were to mediate and get them to start over their whole friendship, but her predicament is understandable.

They didn't exactly got on the right footing early on, especially with that failed party accelerating his mental breakdown. Then again, James is not a pony, figuratively and literally. You can't shove friendship down his throat and expect him to fart rainbows like the others do.