"Gah!" Dash whirled into another roundhouse kick, bursting the last slime monster with a crunch and stink like rotten watermelon. "This is supposed to be fun?"
Flim, panting in mud up to his fetlocks below her, wiped sweat from his horn. "We're still not sure how the Portal Popper picks the characteristics of each individual game, but—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Though she had to admit that she'd enjoyed smacking down the first batch of slime monsters. And the second. And the third. After the sixth group, though, without AJ there... "And what's going on out at the fairgrounds, huh? Hasn't anypony noticed how long we've been gone?"
"Who would notice?" He glanced at her vest and started forward again through the murk.
Looking down, Dash saw the blue arrow pointing straight ahead the same as it had been for an hour or however long this had all been happening. "So you think AJ and Flam really did get sucked into some other race course?"
He wrinkled his nose. "Hopefully one more pungently aromatic than this."
She drifted down so she was flapping along at about his eye level, her legs drawn up to avoid the mud. "And this is really the first time you've tried this yourself? After all the ponies you've run through it?"
"Perhaps you've noticed, Captain Dash, that I am not an adventuresome pony by nature?" He was limping just a little: Dash noticed that plain enough. "I've striven my entire life in pursuit of that which will make my life more leisurely. Battling slime monsters is not a means to that end."
"Then why you and me?" Not that she cared, but she had to do something till the next attack. "I mean, yes, you brought me here to try and trick me into forfeiting the game, but why not rig it so Flam came in with me instead of you?"
Flim chuckled. "He's better at bamboozling your marefriend."
Dash couldn't keep her ears from folding. "What's he doing to AJ?"
"Leading her along the very fine line between calling the authorities and bucking him in the face. Or he would be if everything hadn't gone wrong." His chuckle coughed into a sigh. "He'll find a way to blame me for it, too. He always does..."
"Really?" Dash gave him a glare. "'Cause it's seemed to me, watching you guys work, that there's plenty of blame to go around between the two of you."
"And yet?" Something harsh crept into Flim's smooth voice. "Nothing that happens to us is ever his fault. To hear him tell it, if we'd merely followed his plans since the beginning of our careers, we'd be wealthy gentlecolts, never lifting a hoof again except to gesture for the servants." He was stomping through the mud now. "But because I insist on having input, I doom us every day to mediocrity and failure! That's what my dearest brother seems to believe, at any rate!"
'Too much information, buddy,' Dash wanted to say, but considering that he was already upset, maybe she should try something less harsh. "I never had any brothers or sisters myself, but what I've seen from AJ, Mac, and Apple Bloom, I guess things can get a little tense sometimes."
"The Apples," he muttered, Dash having to prick up her ears to hear him. "Yes, the whole 'dead parents' thing, and yes, the whole 'dirt poor' thing, but what they've got, if I could have it, I'd be so...so..."
"Whoa!" Spots as bright as fireflies were going off in Dash's head, the answer to a question she'd been wondering about for years. "That's why you're always trying to swindle AJ or whatever! You're jealous of her!"
Flim startled back like he was waking up. "I'm most certainly nothing of the kind! The very idea! It's...preposterous! Utterly absurd!"
But Dash had never been surer of anything in her whole entire life. "Look, Flim, I totally get it. I mean, yeah, my folks're great, and I loved growing up as their kid." She poked a hoof at him while making sure that she didn't actually touch him. "Just don't ever tell them I said that, all right?"
"Captain Dash, what are you trying to—?"
"The three of us were a family, sure, but..." Dash let the memory flow over her: the first time Fluttershy had taken her out to Sweet Apple Acres. "I didn't know what a family could really be till I got assigned to the Ponyville weather team and met the Apples. There's something magic about them and that place." Narrowing her eyes, she gave him about half a glare. "And don't try to tell me you don't know what I'm talking about! You wouldn't keep coming back there if you didn't feel it!"
Fortunately for him, he kept quiet; Dash was pretty sure she would've belted him if he'd tried to interrupt. "There's nowhere like it in all of Equestria, and not outside of Equestria, either! Just the way the air moves over it, it...it's like it's hugging the trees, nuzzling the leaves and branches, giving every perfect, gorgeous piece of fruit a long, lingering kiss." Dash had to swallow against the lump that wanted to form in her throat. "And AJ's the best and most beautiful part of all that. She's all I could ever want: her laugh and her eyes and her hooves and her shoulders and her hair and her thighs and her—"
Her throat did close up this time, her face awash with heat at the thought of what she'd been just about to say out loud. Turning away from Flim so he wouldn't see her blush, she caught just a flash of some expression on his face. Not anger or jealousy, but...sadness maybe?
"Yes," he said, and the words seemed to tremble just a little. "Well, the sooner we get to the goal line, the sooner you'll be back with her."
"Exactly." Without another word, she dropped, rolled, whooshed between the mud and his belly, and scooped him up onto her back. "So hang on! We're getting outta here!"