Twilight Sparkle had faced many challenges in her young life, ones that she never thought she would confront. Magic-crazed young women, existential crises from meeting her parallel universe analogue, regular socialization with members of her peer group... At the start of her last year at Crystal Prep, she would've never guessed that she might confront any of those scenarios, much less triumph over all of them.
She also would've never guessed that out of all of the things that would make her admit defeat, it would be physics.
"I don't understand," she muttered, slumped in front of the ring toss booth. Her vision swam as she tried to look over the equations that should have dictated iteration after iteration of the game, each try coming so close, but never settling on a bottle's neck. Some of the blur came from simple fatigue. Some came from tears. "I took everything into account. Everything. This is the most accurate model I can make with pen and paper." She shut her eyes. Who cared if she got the pages wet? They were as useless as she was. "I'm sorry, Sunset. I never should've gotten us into this."
She felt an arm wrap around her shoulders, bandaged fingers gingerly wrapping around hers. "It's not your fault, Twilight," Sunset said from next to her. "I'm the one who was so stubborn that I couldn't just let things go or cut our losses. We could've been spending all day exploring the park. Instead, we just... stood here." Sunset rested her head on Twilight's shoulder. "At least we did it together."
"Yeah." Twilight smiled. Sunset had been with her through it all, from guiding her through her first faltering steps towards being with friends to explaining Equestria—the actual nation full of magic ponies, not the animation company—to giving her the confidence to stand up to those who'd abuse that world's magic.
Wait a second...
Twilight hesitated. She liked to think of herself as a good person. What she now considered was irresponsible, immoral, and even potentially dangerous.
Then she looked at Sunset's eyes and saw a blend of disappointment and self-loathing that eclipsed everything she'd felt after failing.
"Screw it," said Twilight, disentangling herself from Sunset and getting back to her feet.
Sunset looked up at her, her gaze no doubt alarmed by what was strong language coming from the other girl. "Twilight?"
One of the lanky, sallow-skinned brothers sighed. "Honestly, miss, haven't you had enough?"
"Or did you want to account for quantum something-or-other this time around?" said the other.
Twilight dismissed the admittedly tantalizing possibility with some difficulty and brought her magic to bear. Every ring rose as one and arrayed themselves over the bottles.
Sunset rose with them. A weary smirk crossed her face. "Kind of obvious in hindsight."
A ring gently lowered itself onto each bottle. Twilight nodded. "There."
One of the brothers cleared his throat. "Well now, miss, that's very impressive, but hardly—"
The rings shuddered. Twilight snarled. The edges of her vision went green. Her aura encompassed the bottles as well, felt out the magnets hidden in most of them that had pushing the rings off their necks. With a single wrench and the sound of cracking glue, Twilight tore them off. The rings settled down in the weaker magnetic field, though Twilight's sight was still rimmed with vivid energy.
"Oh," said Sunset. Only then did Twilight register the other girl's hand atop her own. "So that's how you did it." Twilight watched the whites of Sunset's eyes blacken, idly wondering about the biology behind such a phenomenon. And the beauty.
The brothers looked back and forth between the girls and each other. Slowly, without saying a word, they brought down one of the largest plushies in the booth, an enormous white winged unicorn, and handed it to the girls.
Twilight smiled and took hold of it in her magic. "Thank you, gentlemen." She passed it to Sunset, who was turning a lovely shade of red. "For you, my dear."
They walked off hand in hand, magic crackling between them and the plushie walking behind, animated in a moment of whimsy.
To their credit, they went a whole three minutes before furiously making out.