//------------------------------//
// Backbreaking Competition 
// Story: Hassenfeld Pony Anthology 
// by Chicago Ted 
//------------------------------//

The airhorn sounded. The gates flung open, and the ponies ripped across the track.
“And they’re off, ladies and gentlemen!” the announcer said. “And right away, Number 4 takes the lead, but Number 7’s gaining on her. She’s not giving it up without a fight—they’re neck and neck, closing in on the first bend, but Number 7 is closer to the inside edge, so she takes the lead.
“And in a surprise upset, it looks like Number 5 is overtaking them both, despite being further out. They’re out of the bend now, and good God just look at Number 5 tear up the dirt! Of course, our radio listeners can’t tell, but she’s putting some serious distance between her and the rest of the pack.
“Here comes the next bend, folks, and Number 5 takes it like the champ she is! She’s already halfway around by the time Number 4 starts turning; she’s relentless! Finish line’s just yards away, and I can confidently say. . . the race is over, and the winner is Number 5, a Rainbow Dash model named Spectrum! Second place, Number 4, Lightning Dust model, Jolt. Third place, Number 7, Spitfire model, Spitfire. . . .”
Ten tired, sweating ponies eventually made their way to the communal water basin for a nice, long drink. A few even dunked their heads underwater to cool off.
Spitfire eventually came back up and stared at Spectrum. “What. . . are you?” she asked.
Spectrum just grinned. “A born winner, of course! What’d you expect?”
Spitfire’s stare lingered for a moment longer, before she sighed and went back to drinking.
Spectrum, meanwhile, kept listening to the announcer. There was talk about advancing to a bigger regional championship, the top prize being a large, shining gold (actually brass) trophy, being immortalized in a hall of fame, “. . . and twenty thousand dollars!”
Trophies and fame be damned—the prize money was her aim! Not that they weren’t nice bonuses too. . . .
Once she got to her stable, she shimmied out of her race jacket—white and emblazoned with an orange 5 on both sides—and waited for the stable hand to undo her anti-flight belt.
He came around soon enough. Once he got it off, the release of pressure from her midsection and especially her wings felt almost therapeutic. “Thanks!” Without further delay, she grabbed her saddlebags and headed for the derby exit.
The stable master was leaning on the outside wall, on a smoke break. “Hey Spectrum. Going home?”
“Yep. Long day!” She turned left and trotted off. “See you next week, Dylan!” she called back.
Dylan just waved back. Then his head jerked up when he heard some loud cluttering from inside the stable. “Bah, this again?” He spat out his cigarette and stamped out the flame, then went back inside to deal with the problem.


⁂


Being a pet implied that one needed a leash when in public, but Hassenfeld ponies were not ordinary pets. Their intelligence was on par with their human owners, so it was not out of the question for them to navigate city streets on their own.
Still, it was an uncommon sight, as Spectrum knew full well. Just her unaccompanied presence turned quite a few heads as she waited for the traffic lights to turn. She watched the cars, of all sorts of vibrant colors, zipping past her left and right at almost blinding speeds. Finally the traffic lights turned yellow, and the cars started slowing. A moment later, the lights turned red, and the crossing man lit up.
As she was crossing Castillo Street, someone called out to her, “Hey, you lost or somethin’?”
Spectrum didn’t answer—she got that question all the time, and it just wasn’t worth it to shout herself hoarse “I’m fine, thanks!” Or perhaps the more witty “No, I won!”
She turned right at a corner café, and almost bumped into a small child. “Woah. . . .” She had to look up to Spectrum. “Pretty pony!”
Spectrum just grinned, and went on her way. Before she could get far, the child’s mother called out to her, “Hey! Does your owner let you wander out here alone?”
“I do it all the time,” Spectrum reassured. “No big deal.”
The mother shrugged. “If you say so. C’mon, Sarah!”
“But Mom. . . .” Eventually Sarah parted with Spectrum, and they went their separate ways. Good thing too—where Spectrum was going, she didn’t exactly want a small child to be. After glancing both ways to make sure nobody was looking, Spectrum dipped into a dark alleyway.
This was not the way home.
The alleyway was empty, save for a blue dumpster and a couple of garbage bins. Oh, and Carlos, Spectrum’s bookie. She walked over to him and sat on her haunches. “Buenas tardes,” she greeted. “¿Tienes el dinero?”
“Sí, aquí está.” He handed her a bundle. Spectrum quickly counted the bills—twelve hundred dollars.
“Nada mal,” she said. “Pero. . . tengo otra carrera la semana que viene.”
“¡Pues ándale! Tú sabes como es.” He held his hand out. “¿Cuánto es?”
Spectrum gave it some thought. Then she pulled out a few bills. “Veinte,” she told him.
“Uyy, ya te crees la gran cosa y todo.” Carlos pocketed her bet. “Dale, no te preocupes; la que te vas a ganar si lo logras. Y yo sé que lo harás.”
“Bueno pues, gracias.” She got up, slipped the money into her saddlebag, and started walking away. “¡Te veo el Sábado!”
Carlos said nothing. Spectrum checked both ways of the alley before exiting the alleyway, and this time going straight home. Do not pass go, do not collect another $200.


⁂


It was three in the afternoon when Spectrum got to the front door. She fished her house key out of her saddlebag, then with some oral flexibility, unlocked the door and let herself in.
She then shut and locked it behind her. She still remembered the time her owner yelled at her for leaving the door unlocked. Never again, she reminded herself.
Down the hall she went, to her bedroom—really a spare closet, she certainly never slept in it—where she slipped the money inside a cardboard box that her owner never checked.
She then did the math on a spare sheet of paper. Eleven hundred eighty, plus the ninety-six thousand, two hundred forty already there, was ninety-seven, four hundred twenty. Exceedingly close, but still short of her goal of one hundred thousand—still, not bad for a Hassenfeld.
Anyone else would have spent it by now on some needless bit of opulence—a Rolls-Royce, diamond jewelry, a work from some famous artist—but Spectrum was a Rainbow Dash model, and that meant loyalty. Not just to herself, but to her owner.
Satisfied with her work, she shut the box, slid it back onto the shelf, did her best to make it look undisturbed, slipped off her saddlebags, and shut the closet. Then she went into the bathroom—as the adage goes, she was “rode hard, put away wet.”
She stepped into the shower, and reached up to the “cold” knob. The water came at once, and she took a moment to bask in the refreshingly cool stream. Besides the race, it had been unseasonably hot today. She needed this.
Okay, that’s enough water wasted. She grabbed her shampoo from the rack, and lathered up her mane and tail, letting some of the suds spill out onto her coat. After a few moments of this, she rinsed them off, and then properly lathered up her coat.
Once she was done rinsing out her coat, she started cleaning off her hooves, paying careful attention to pick out any stray specks of dirt she picked up from the racetrack. It was a miracle she hadn’t tracked anything inside the house yet.
Satisfied with her work, Spectrum shut the water off. She knelt down to the drain and grabbed up the loose strands of hairs she shed while showering, and threw them in the trash. She pulled a fresh towel from the cupboard under the sink, and dried herself off. Once she was done, she threw it onto the towel pole, and went into the living room.
Right as she lied down on the couch and stretched herself out, she heard the familiar clicking of the front door’s lock. She looked up just in time to see the door open, and see him—the reason why she left the house behind his back, the reason she entered herself in so many Hassenfeld pony races, the reason why she consistently pushed herself to her physical limits, the reason why she even stooped to illegal gambling on the side.
Once he got the door opened, Henry wheeled himself inside and shut it behind him, firmly locking it. “Hey, Spectrum,” he greeted wearily.
“Hey Henry!” She tried to act chipper, like she stayed home and did nothing all day. “How’d your day go?”
“About as well as they usually do.” He wheeled up to the couch to meet her. “Just busy accounting work, lots of math involved. I doubt you’d like that.”
“What? Nah,” Spectrum lied. “Math’s for eggheads! . . . er, no offense.”
Henry just rolled his eyes. “If what’s paying the bills around here makes me an egghead, then I’ll wear the shell.” He started to roll into the kitchen. “If you could just help me—”
“Sure thing!” She hopped up and went into the kitchen. As much as he wanted to be self-sufficient, Henry still needed some practice. Ever since the accident two years ago. . . .
Spectrum remembered that day vividly. One day she noticed Henry was running home late, far later than usual. Then the phone rang. She didn’t know how to use it yet, so she listened to the answering machine. It was the emergency room—just after noon, Henry had gotten into a terrible car wreck. He survived, the other driver did not.
Serves him right, she thought, for driving drunk.
Henry’s survival came at the cost of his mobility. According to the doctors, the accident damaged his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Fortunately it was reversible, but Henry balked at the cost of the surgery needed.
Even with Henry’s job at an accounting firm, there was no way he could afford it. And literally to add insult to injury, his insurance refused to cover the surgery, meaning he’d have to pay the full amount out of his own pocket.
A cursory Google search found that surgeries of this nature cost up to one hundred thousand dollars. A steep amount, to be sure, but Spectrum was nothing if not determined. And as is typical of Rainbow Dash models, she wanted to put a flourish to her task—for two years, she entered pony races, won thousands in prize money, then won thousands more on the side when she met Carlos—all this was kept under the radar, in order to surprise him.
“Spectrum, did you say something?” Henry asked her just then.
Spectrum realized she was seconds away from giving away her secret. “Uh, nope! Must’ve been hearing things!” she said. Better not get caught this soon.


⁂


Come Saturday, the day of the regional championship, Spectrum was in her A-game. Once she got belted and jacketed—again with Number 5—she stood in her stall and waited for the airhorn.
“Hey, who are you!?”
Spectrum turned to see that Number 6 was another Rainbow Dash. “Name’s Spectrum, what’s it to you?”
“Iris. And that trophy’s mine, you got it?”
“On your marks. . . .”
Spectrum and Iris kept staring each other down.
“Get set. . . .”
Then they looked away, to the track ahead.
The airhorn sounded, and the gates opened.
“And they’re off! And already Number 5 and Number 6 tie for the lead. They’re neck and neck—it’s 5! No, 6! No, 5 again! And that’s just before the first bend!
“And there they are! Number 6 is closer to the inside, so she’s edging ahead. Can Number 5 beat her? This is where she usually activates her trap card, if her previous races have anything to say.
“They’re out of the bend, and it looks like Number 5’s still behind! It’s still a close contest, and it’s pretty clear none of the others have a chance. Here comes the next bend!
“Unbelievable! Number 5 must has tripped over something on the racetrack. The other ponies are giving her room, going around her, and it looks like she’s twisted her hind left ankle! Unfortunately, that means she’s going to be out of the race. . . .”
Spectrum stopped listening—it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She came all this way over two years, just to walk away with a crippling injury, with no prize money nor betting profit. Slowly, she started limping off the track, to get herself unbelted and her wound dressed as soon as possible.


⁂


Henry must’ve been let off early, since, despite her flying home as fast as she could—who knew getting a twisted ankle bandaged could take so long?—he was home way before Spectrum. And he was most displeased.
“Spectrum, where have you been?” He was waiting at the door for her. “How long have you been gone?” He finally smelled her strong sweat. “Have you been running here?” Then he looked at her bandaged leg. “What happened to you out there!?”
She sighed. “Guess my secret’s out.” She quickly flew to her closet and grabbed the box. At least it was my hind leg and not my front. She dropped it right in front of him and popped open the lid.
Henry’s jaw dropped. “How did you—”
“For the last two years,” she explained, “ever since the accident, I’ve been running in races at Summerdam Derby. Most of that’s prize money. The rest is from my bookie, once I figured out I could place bets on myself. I’ve been raising enough for you to get your spine fixed. Why?”
She hovered right in his face. “Because I love you. I can’t imagine you going another day without walking like you used to. I want to make this better. But I tripped and fell in today’s race, and I couldn’t get you the full hundred thousand. I’m sorry.”
Henry started checking Spectrum’s math. When he got to the end, he started tearing up. “Spectrum. . . honey. . . I could easily afford the difference. Thank you, but. . . ” He set the paper down. “You really shouldn’t have gone out racing without my knowledge, and certainly without my permission. Now look at you! You’ve gone and hurt yourself just to help me. Tell me Spectrum, was it worth all the trouble?”
“As long as you’re better,” Spectrum said, “it’ll be worth the pain.”
“And furthermore—” he pointed at the money—“how would I explain all of this to the IRS?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For now. . . .” She wrapped her arms around him, as best as she could.
He returned the gesture, and started crying into her barrel. “This is the greatest moment of my life. Thank you, thank you Spectrum, from the bottom of my heart.” He let go of her. “Now go hit the shower. . . champ.”