//------------------------------//
// Three 
// Story: Going Home 
// by Baal Bunny 
//------------------------------//

The glare of the white light puffed away from Dash like a morning fog, and she couldn't keep herself groundbound. Springing into a hover, she spun in place to do some quick recon—a mix of mud and water giving off a swampy smell, air warm and heavy with moisture, shadows thick in the dim light drifting down from tree canopies above, the trees themselves big and dark and stretching up like pillars every dozen paces or so.

She had to grin. So flying wouldn't give her an advantage. Completing her circuit, she opened her mouth to tell AJ that she might stand a chance in this race after all—

And found herself staring at a wide-eyed Flim—or Flam: she'd never been sure which was which. This was the one without the mustache, anyway. "What're you doing here?" she blurted out.

He blinked, the greenish light of his horn the brightest spot anywhere within sight. "I...I don't know."

"You don't know?" Dash stared at him "How can you not know?"

Shrugging, he swallowed so hard, Dash could follow it moving down the inside of his neck. "Well, when Flam and I, uhh, acquired the Portal Popper XTE, it didn't come with a manual. After weeks of careful study, however, we were absolutely certain we'd ascertained the proper procedure for operating the game, so we brought it to Ponyville to reveal its wonder to the masses." His words flowed out every bit as flowery as they always did, but his eyes kept shifting back and forth at every splash and slithery sound out in the trees.

Dash sighed. "You mean you stole the thing, thought you knew how to work it, aimed it wrong, and now I'm stuck in here with you instead of Applejack."

Flim's snout wrinkled. "First, we didn't steal the Portal Popper: it was left behind at the resort by a guest who fled without paying his bill, so our ownership is entirely legal and unquestionable. Second, after offering the Portal Popper as a special add-on attraction to our Premium Club members, we've tested it more than two dozen times without a single problem."

"Whoa." Dash would've dropped to the ground it it hadn't been fetlock deep in brownish-gray water. "You experimented on the ponies staying at your hotel?"

"They volunteered." He shrugged. "And their membership in our Premium Club exempts us from any liability." He waved at her right shoulder. "My third point, however, Captain Dash, is that we have two options for removing ourselves from our current dilemma: we follow the tracer in your vest through this no-doubt charming landscape to the game's finish line." The grin that jerked across the big jerk's face didn't fool Dash: he was half a heartbeat away from matching Fluttershy in the cringing and cowering department. "Once we reach it, we'll be instantly transported to the fairgrounds whence we began."

"You hope." She couldn't stop her own grin from spreading at the beads of sweat glistening along his forehead. But she couldn't deny the little blue arrow pointing to the right that flashed above her shoulder either. "And what's the other way to get back?"

"Touch the forfeit button." He waved at her left shoulder, a tiny scowl tightening his quivering lower lip. "We went through all this before Flam and I activated the device, you know."

"Yeah, yeah." She glanced down at the big red button on her vest. "Of course, if I do that second one, it'll technically mean I lost, won't it? That'd make a nice sign to put over your booth: 'Play the game that beat the great Rainbow Dash!'"

His eyes went wide. "I...I assure you, Captain Dash! That thought never even began to cross our minds!"

Dash cocked her head. "'Our minds'? As in 'you and your brother'? As in 'I'm not the first pony to bring the idea up'?"

He froze, and the low, grunting moan that sounded off to Dash's left made him jump sideways, his straw hat flying off.

"Yep, yep, yep." Dash smacked her lips. "It'd serve you right, me leaving you here to play with whatever's creeping around out there till I find the finish line."

The quiver spread from his lip to his whole snout.

"But y'see, Flim?" She stepped closer to him in case she had to swoop them both away in a hurry. "I've pretty much proved any point I ever needed to prove, don't you think? Leading the Bolts, saving the world a dozen times, being part of the council that rules Equestria, getting to wake up every day beside the second-awesomest mare ever born..." She waved to the darkness. "I do this sort of stuff now for fun, not because I need to show anycreature anything anymore. And without AJ, there's nothing fun here. Nothing at all."

Grinning, she slapped her vest's forfeit button—

And nothing at all happened.