//------------------------------//
// Going for Gold 
// Story: Consolation Prize 
// by SockPuppet 
//------------------------------//

"Izzy!" Zipp shouted, fluttering down to land just outside Izzy's Bridlewood cottage. "Izzy, you in there?"

The door popped open. "Your flappity majesticness! Your hignessesesness! Zipp! Come in, come in! What's up?"

Zipp looked left and right and then trotted into La Villa Izzy.

"I need... another glowup," Zipp said.

Izzy poured tea—very precisely, she'd been practicing with her new levitation—and took a sip. She turned to Zipp and raised an eyebrow.

"But..." Zipp said. "I need you to, uh, keep some aspects of this favor..."

"Confidential?"

Zipp nodded.

"Of course! I like, never blab about anything important. One of the reasons I always blab and patter and prattle about the unimportant is so that I never accidentally slip up with the important stuff. Like for instance, the time Jasper got Gloomy Sonnet pregnant and Gloomy Sonnet told me because nopony else can stand her rhymes? I didn't like, tell anypony she was pregnant and I did that by instead telling everypony about my hemo—"

Zipp reached forward and clamped Izzy's mouth shut with her forehooves. "Understood."

"So, what's up?"

"Okay, so, I qualified for the Zephyr Heights team for the First Equestria Winter Games."

Izzy squealed and jumped up to hug Zipp. She picked Zipp up and swung her in a full circle. "Oh! Oh! That's so exciting! I'm so excited for you! I'm so excited I could—" A horn laser blasted across her cottage and blew a hoof's-width of banister off the stairway.

"I need some special equipment," Zipp said, breaking Izzy's hug, pointing Izzy's horn in a safe direction, and sitting back down, "and I don't trust the... ethics... of the Zephyr Heights sportswear industry?"

Izzy nodded. 

"You can't tell anypony until the games start," Zipp said.

Izzy made a lips-zipped gesture.

"Okay, so, I qualified for the snowboard competition. The half-pipe."

Izzy screamed and danced in place. "That's what you were hoping for!"

With a huge smile, Zipp nodded her head. "Yeah, I'm super excited. But... the rules committee... no wings."

Izzy's eyes got wide.

"Yeah, you see?"

"Something to cover your wings?"

"And keep me warm. Maritime Bay's mountains get crazy cold when the wind turns offshore in the winter."

"So what's the problem?" Izzy said.

"Okay, so... Pipp is going to attend the games. Dressmakers are already shanking each other to be the ones to make her outfits. Mom is going to attend the games. Formalwear makers are relearning lighting to blast each other's balls off to be the ones to make her gowns."

"Your mom is more popular? Well, that's a surprise."

"Pipp is too..." Zipp twirled a hoof "...round. She gives dressmakers conniptions, they come off looking like barrel makers. That's why Pipp mostly just performs in her crown."

"So...," Izzy said, "you came to me instead of a ZH seamstress because..."

"Because you're my friend! And well, ah, ahem..."

Izzy leaned forward again. "And because you're the sexy athletic princess and every sportswear maker in town will be willing to burn down an occupied orphanage to get your commission?"

"This way," Zipp said, "I won't be responsible for somepony getting his own head left in his bed."

"Zipp, I am so honored!" Izzy went to her blackboard and levitated some chalk. "What do you need?"

From her saddlebag, Zipp pulled out a print of the ancient poster in her hot-air balloon station, the poster showing the traditional pegasus athletic uniforms. "Blue body glove, just a shade lighter than royal blue. Yellow lightning bolts and edging. I'll skip the hood, since I need a ski helmet."

"Oh my gosh, that'll look, like, amazing on you!"

Zipp grinned. "Thanks."

Izzy leaned in close, staring into Zipp's surprised eyes, until their noses touched. "You know who else will think it'll look amazing?"

"I don't know what or of whom you're talking about," Zipp said, gently pushing Izzy backwards.

"You know he will," Izzy purred.

A few hours later, Zipp twirled in front of the mirror. "Izzy! It's perfect! Thank you soooo much!"

"How's the wing-cover?"

"Awkward, but it feels... strangely good?"

Izzy sniffed and smiled. "I can tell. There's something else I could make for you... something, shall we say, even more confidential?"

"Huh?" Zipp asked.

Izzy explained and drew a sketch on her chalkboard.

"Honey," Zipp said with a grin, "I came to the right cottage."





Zipp sat dejectedly in the snow. After one of the Zephyr Heights team trainers finished wrapping her left rear leg in an elastic bandage, Zipp held an icepack to the injured ankle. She pulled off her helmet and dropped it next to her snowboard, into the fresh powder. She squinted in the bright reflections of the noontime snow.

Hitch trotted up, his blueish-black sheriff's parka hood thrown back and dark sunglasses on his eyes.

"How're Maretime Bay's first Equestria Games going, Sheriff?" Zipp asked. She pulled her snow goggles off the helmet and donned them. "Keeping you busy?"

"Sunny and your sister got in a drinking contest with my deputy last night," Hitch said, "so I don't have any help right now while Sprout gets his stomach pumped. Did you know Canterlogic now makes stomach pumps, with their anti-pegasus and -unicorn product lines dead?"

"I don't drink with Pipp, not since middle school," Zipp said with a frown. "Pipp's not very big, but she can hold a surprising amount of booze. I wonder if her roundedness is all liver?"

"How'd you do?" Hitch's eye widened when he saw the icepack and bandage. He put a hoof on her withers. "Are you hurt?"

"Just a strain," Zipp said. "Maybe a minor sprain. Fourth. Missed the podium by half a point."

"Oh," Hitch said. "I'm sorry to hear that, I know you must have been disappointed."

Zipp turned away from him and sniffed, raising her goggles to wipe at her eyes with a fetlock. The cold wind was making her eyes water. Looking back at Hitch, she said, "Zephyr Heights is sweeping speed skating and curling. We'll take plenty of other medals home."

"They're setting up the podium," Hitch observed. "Looks like ZH still took silver."

A unicorn pranced in a circle and hopped onto the podium's top, ready for her gold medal. She waved a hoof over her head to cheers from the mixed crowd. Zipp's team captain stepped onto the silver platform and an earth pony in Maretime Bay colors hopped up to the bronze platform of the podium.

Pipp staggered up, wearing an elegant whitish-aqua winter-weight cloak, sipping from a bottle in a brown paper bag, and wearing black welder's goggles. "I feel like I tested Zipp's trebuchet and landed head-first."

"Sprout will live," Hitch said. "Are you drinking again?"

"Down of the dog that bit me," Pipp said, waggling the bottle. 

"You missed my final run," Zipp said sourly.

"If my own funeral had been this morning, I would have missed it."

As soon as the medals were placed around the three winner's necks, Pipp said, "I'm up. 🎶Meeee meee meee mEeEeEeEe...🎵"  Pipp took another sip from the brown-paper-bagged bottle and passed it to Hitch. 

"Wait!" Zipp shouted at Pipp's departing posterior. "ZH didn't win, they need the Bridlewood anthem!"

Pipp removed her welding goggles, squinting into the brutal snow-reflected sunlight. She flipped her wings, shook her rump, leaned into the microphone...

...and gave a flawless, pitch-perfect rendition of The Ponish Crystalliers, Birdlewood's anthem:


Some talk of Twilight Sparkle, and some of Pow'rful Trixie,
Of Starlight and Celestia, and such great names as these,
But of all Equestria's brave heroes, there's none that can compare,
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, to the Ponish Crystalliers...


"Huh," Zipp said after Pipp finished.

"Huh," Hitch said.

Putting the welding goggles back on and returning to Zipp and Hitch, Pipp said, "What, did you think I just assumed Zephyr Heights had to win and I would get up there and ad-lib something insulting when I learned Bridlewood won?"

"I mean..." Zipp said.

"I'm a professional, Zipp. Singing is what I do. I volunteered for this event, instead of any of the others, because it was your event and I hoped you would take gold and it would have been so amazing to sing our anthem for my sister, but it would have been unprofessional not to be prepared for any eventuality."

"Oh," Zipp said. "I'm... sorry."

Pipp ran a feather under Hitch's chin. "Despite my sister's low opinion of me, I will do her a favor. I'm sure that one... special... spot... right between the wings is just unbelievably sore and tight and needs a massage. It wouldn't look right for her sister to massage it, of course..."

"Right between the wings?" Hitch asked.

"Right between." Pipp booped his nose, retrieved her paper bag, took another sip, and strutted off with some extra butt-shake.

"Thanks!" Hitch called at her. Pipp shook her butt a little more in reply.

Queen Haven, resplendent in a white faux-fur-trimmed winter cloak and dark sunglasses, approached the podium and congratulated the pegasus wearing the silver, then the other two medalists.

"Let's get outta here," Zipp said. "I'm not in the mood for Mom to come give me the 'you did your best' speech right now. It—it kinda hurts to have missed the podium by half a point."

Hitch extended a hoof and helped her stand.





That night, with a half a bottle of wine in each of them, Zipp laid flat on her belly on Hitch's bed, her legs and wings splayed. Hitch sat across her hips, careful of her still-bandaged ankle, and massaged her back.

Zipp's voice was muffled, her snout pressed into the mattress: "Is some crisis going to crop up and you get called away just as this is getting good?"

"No," Hitch said. "Sprout is still in the hospital—he's insisting on hospice, even though he'll be fine—but I deputized your mom's two most competent guards and one of the unicorns for the night."

"Which guards?" Zipp asked.

"Thunder and Zoom."

"Zoom is competent," Zipp conceded. "Please tell me the unicorn isn't Izzy."

"'Shock and awe, I am the law.'"

"Ha! Gloomy Sonnet?"

"Her. She can shame ponies into behaving just with her horrible rhymes." Hitch remembered Pipp's words from earlier and leaned into his massage, right between Zipp's wings.

"Oh my skittles," she said. "That's amazing, Hitch."

All of her muscles were sore. Hitch massaged them, shoulders and flanks, thighs and hips, as the wine relaxed Zipp.

Zipp stretched and rolled over, lying on her back, and held up her forelegs for a hug. Hitch lowered himself into her embrace, his weight pushing down on her.

They kissed, deeply, the mood in the bedroom quickly transitioning from sensual to erotic. Zipp rubbed her forehooves up and down Hitch's muscular flanks and grabbed his firm butt. After a minute or two, Zipp said, "Ya know, I've got something more comfortable in my bag..."

Hitch grinned. "More comfortable than naked?"

Zipp squirmed off the bed, picked up her travel bag, and limped on three legs into the bathroom. "Ignore my gimpy gait!" Zipp called. "I'm being as sexy as I can with a sprained ankle."

Rolling onto his back, Hitch folded his forelegs behind his head and waited. Surprisingly quickly—Zipp wasn't the kind of girl to make a guy wait, after all—she returned.

Hitch whistled, his eyes going wide, his ears (and something else) perking up. "Wow!"

Zipp spun in a circle. "You like it? Izzy made it for me after she made the snowsuit."

The negligee covered her wings, holding them bound tight to her torso, but it was black silk with lacy fuschia trim the same color as Zipp's mane. It was transparent in all the right spots and opaque in the others and—

"Wow," Hitch said again. "Looks great on you..."

Zipp raised an eyebrow. "What's that face? You have an 'although' coming, I can hear it."

"No, no, not at all!"

Zipp walked to the bed and nibbled Hitch's ribs. He giggled and spasmed as she hit his tickle-spot. "Tell me, Sheriff, or I'll tickle you senseless."

"Okay, okay," he said. "Okay. It looks great, don't misunderstand me, right? Very sexy."

She glanced downward. "I can tell you think that's the truth."

Hitch blushed. "But your, ah, snowboarding outfit? The really athletic one? Any mare can make lacy and silky bedroom gear look good. It takes a really special mare to fill athletic gear just right. And you did."

Zipp blinked. "You want to make love to me... while I wear my snowsuit?"

Hitch gave a tiny shrug and smile.

Zipp smiled back and brushed a hoof along the gold-colored fur of his flanks. "I guess I get the gold after all, today."