Along a thin desert highway that leads east and west from horizon to desolate horizon, a lone building rests, its glass windows glinting in the hot noonday sun. It's an adorably small structure—almost a square shack, really—with the height of one story and a width no greater than fifteen feet. An aluminum a/c unit sits along the rear of the building, humming sonorously in the desert air. A gust of wind kicks at the arid soil surrounding the edifice, tossing a tumbleweed across the road and back into the grainy wasteland beyond.
After an interminable breath in time, a shadow descends upon the structure, lowering in a cyclonic arc. Wind picks up, like that of an airship coming in for its final descent. At last, the shadow on the ground is met by a quartet of hooves—blue as a spring sky. The limbs dig into the dirt, flexing muscles that have been windblown for hours upon hours of awesome flight.
Exhaling fitfully, Rainbow Dash stands before the glass door to the tiny structure. With a stretch of her wings above brown saddlebags, the lithe pegasus slides a shiny pair of goggles over her sweaty brow and smirks devilishly at the building in front of her. Blowing aside a prismatic bang or two, she trots slowly towards the entrance. She grips the handle in one hoof and swings the door open, exposing herself to an arctic blast of air conditioning.
Rainbow Dash squints into the cold gust, her mane billowing as if she's once again sailing through the sky at rocket speeds. As she walks calmly into the glass-lined interior, her fuzzy blue ears twitch to the sound of cheesy jazz muzak playing over age-old speakers built into the ceiling panels between errant fire sprinklers. The piano and saxophone notes are all-the-more obscured by the incessant buzz of the fluorescent bulbs flickering overhead.
Nevertheless, she continues forward into the cramped interior of the building, her hooves making cute little tapping sounds against the polished black-and-white tile of the solitary room. Her eyes are trained forward, fixated on one object and one object alone.
Inside the building is a lone vending machine. It stands like a dark monolith, its black metal body stained with the soot of age and neglect. Along the front, however, an acrylic sheathe contains a broad label with crimson, black, and white colors. The words boldly display "Dr. Pony" at a diagonal angle with glittering effluence, along with several impressionistically illustrated suds and bubbles. In even tinier font, the words "A Pony Cola Product" appear, reflecting the petite pegasus' sapphiric face.
Along the right side of the machine, bordering the display, is a panel that features a series of large plastic buttons—six in all—each featuring the same "Dr. Pony" logo repeated ad nauseam. Every one of them lights up with a tiny green bulb labeled "In Stock." Above the buttons is a coin insert, and beneath the same six inputs is a tiny notch for released bits.
Far down at the center of the vending machine rests a bottle dispenser. Even from a distance, Rainbow Dash can feel the refrigerated air of the machine wafting out of the mouth-like orifice. A dull hum emanates from the contraption, adding a pedal point to the jazz muzak crackling overhead.
Rainbow Dash comes to a stop, her ruby eyes matching the scarlet hues of the logo brimming before her. The pony's pupils shrink as she hangs her mouth open, salivating with shameless thirst. Eventually, she snaps out of it, gulping and smirking happily at the brightly-lit buttons looming above her.
Humming to herself, she lifts her right wing up and reaches her muzzle down to a latch of her saddlebag. Digging her mouth into the satchel, she rummages around for a few seconds. Finally, with a clinking sound, her head emerges with a shiny golden bit clasped between her pearly whites. Grinning around the solid metal of the coin, the petite pegasus trots up to the machine, holds her breath, and lifts her front body up... up... so that she can reach the coin insert. Grunting a bit from the imposed stretch, she finally drops the coin into the slot. After hearing the rattling noise, she slaps her hoof over the topmost Dr. Pony button of the panel.
With a victorious exhale, Rainbow Dash plops back down on all fours. She adjusts the goggles across her brow and grins at the bottle dispenser. Her spectral tail flicks left and right with excitement as her tongue dangles thirstily in the air.
In the meantime, the machine whirs... whirs again... then makes a grotesque buzzing noise.
Rainbow's eyes blink.
With a ringing sound, the same bit that she had just inserted rattles into place in the coin notch beneath the six buttons.
The pegasus' brow furrows. She squints as she glances at the coin, then at the glowing heart of the Dr. Pony machine, then back at the coin yet again. She chews on her lip, her ruby eyes thin and contemplative.
In liquid motion, she stretches herself back up against the machine, balanced on two rear hooves like a stretching cat. Clasping the coin once more in her teeth, she stares at the vending machine for a few more seconds, then slips the bit into the insert again. She raises a hoof—hesitates—but this time presses the second Dr. Pony buttom from the top of the panel.
Falling back onto all fours, Rainbow Dash squats on her haunches and smiles at the machine, waiting for it to give her the delicious beverage. Her ruby eyes are wide, bright, and sparkly... that is until the contraption buzzes again, and her blue ears twitch in disbelief to hear the rattle of the lone bit in the notch. Her facial muscles melt in a horrified grimace as she gazes at the glinting golden shape of the naked coin. Squinting, she studies the two top buttons, and indeed they are labeled "In stock" with glowing green bulbs.
The vending machine looms like a gravestone. The jazz muzak hellishly persists amidst the buzz of flickering lights.
With flaring nostrils, Rainbow Dash jumps up and hovers in the air before the infernal contraption. Frowning this time, she yanks the coin out from its notch and gives the remaining four buttons a vicious glare. In swift motion, she shoves the bit into the slot and slaps her blue hooves over the third button. The Dr. Pony machine whirs, buzzes, and spits out the coin. With a grumbling breath, Rainbow picks the coin back up, slides it in, and hits the fourth button. There's a whir, a buzz, and a rattle. Gnashing her teeth, she grabs and inserts the coin again. Whir, buzz, rattle: and she repeats, this time all-but-bucking the sixth button.
This time, something heavenly alights the air: a dinging noise.
Rainbow Dash gasps. A twinkling of joy returns to her ruby eyes as she rubs her two front hooves together and emits a joyous "squee."
With a dull thud, a dark bottle rattles into place in the dispenser.
Rainbow Dash's hooves clap against the tile as she lands before the machine. Swinging her forelimb ahead, she grabs the bottle in the crook of her hoof and stares at it with a gaping grin.
Her eyes twitch. Rainbow's smile turns into a grimace as her ears droop on either side of her spectral mane.
The bottle is a deep purple. This is because it's not Dr. Pony, but instead a vicious helping of grape soda.
Rainbow Dash slowly shakes her head left and right as if having witnessed the horrific death of her parents to a cloudthresher. She swallows a melancholic lump down her throat, then glances—shivering—back up at the machine.
It stands high above her like the front entrance to a grim, dark sepulcher. The sixth button indeed proclaims itself to be "Dr. Pony" and not grape soda. Not even the dark legacy of Discord has ever bequeathed the world this degree of horrible deceit.
Rainbow's face slowly morphs from a pained grimace to a hideous snarl. Grunting, she throws the bottle against the floor, then reaches deep into her saddlebag. Producing another golden bit, she hovers before the front of the machine. With sudden patience, she takes several deep breaths. Slowly—like a mother bird about to feed her chicks—she lowers the singular bit to the coin insert. Her nostrils flare once... twice... and she drops the coin in.
No sooner has it rattled down the slot then Rainbow Dash is spinning in mid-air with a grunt. She slaps every one of her hooves firmly over the top four buttons. Her colorful tail presses hard against the fifth button while she utterly ignores the deceitful sixth. She grits her teeth with the effort of applying her weight harder and harder against the five "Dr. Pony" labeled panels. Tiny, high-pitched grunting noises escape from her lips. The pony’s ears twitch to register the whiring and buzzing from deep within the vending machine as it struggles to calculate the pegasus' ardent, fivefold request.
Then, uncoiling her muscles, Rainbow Dash lithely backflips from the machine and lands on the tile floor. She stands up straight, grinning a crescent moon as the gears inside the device twirl and turn. There is a breath of silence, and then—
With a clattering noise, the vending machine spits the coin out of its notch, sending it ricocheting like a bullet off of Rainbow Dash's skull.
Rainbow Dash flinches from the blow, squinting one eye shut as her voice cracks forth a pained yelp. Rubbing her eyelid, she glares at the machine. The coat along the back of her neck rises like a canine. Flapping her wings, she blurs along the tile floor, snatches the coin up, and practically slams into the slot.
This time, she slams her hooves in a blue blur across all five buttons in random fashion. A long, high-pitched war cry flies from her throat as she hammers and hammers away at the top five panels, striking them so hard that several of them form irrevocable dents while half of the green bulbs short out.
The vending machine shakes and rocks from the equine punishment.
When she finally has no strength to pummel machine anymore, she slumps down onto all four hooves and pants... pants... pants for breath. Then, with her eyes clinging shut, she lets loose a long moan and limply head-butts the front of the vending machine, slumping her body against it.
There's a whir... a rattle... and an angelic dinging sound.
Rainbow's ears perk up. She flashes her eyes open and tilts her head towards the brightly lit machine. An exhausted grin forms—which is promptly stuffed by a bottle of grape soda flying like a torpedo into her mouth. She lets out a muffled scream and falls backwards, her hooves sticking towards the ceiling like an adorable blue cockroach's.
After much struggle and anguish, she manages to pry the detestable soda from her jaws. Snarling, she flings it against the tile floor and flashes a vending machine a deathly glare.
The monolothic soda dispenser stands like an apathetic mountain in the center of the air conditioned building.
Hissing like a moody alligator, Rainbow Dash reaches into her saddlebag and whips out an absurdly huge mallet. She hovers before the machine, inserts a golden bit, then slams the full weight of the bludgeon against the giant, glowing "Dr. Pony" logo.
The contraption absorbs the blow like a block of titanium, sending turbulent vibrations down the length of the hammer and straight into Rainbow's mouth. With a warbling shriek, Rainbow Dash is thrown towards the far side of the room. She slams against a window, forming tiny cracks in the transparent glass.
Frowning, she kicks off the pane—filling the air of the tiny building's interior with furious thunder. She slams the hammer even harder against the machine. When nothing happens, she flies an angry orbit around the device, slamming and pummeling it from multiple angles. The aged speaker's jazz muzak is drowned out by the cacophony of rhythmic hammer strikes, like a chain gang is working overtime across the claustrophobic lengths of the room. Undaunted, Rainbow Dash continues her relentless punishment like some infernal endgame limit break.
Finally, with her heaving lungs having caught up with her, she slumps to a stand-still in front of the machine with drooping wings. Her face is awash with sweat while several colorful bangs stick out at awkward angles. Her pupils rotate in opposite directions for a few seconds before she sucks her breath in with a strong inhale. Then, with sneering vehemence, she gives the machine one last smack with the hammer.
The bludgeon shatters, forming a pile of brown sawdust on the floor.
Rainbow Dash blinks at it, rolls her eyes back, and emits an emo-tastic moan into the air of the place.
Right at that precise moment, the machine whirs, buzzes, and spits out the golden bit from the notch below the six buttons. The metal coin flies like a mosquito and shoots straight down Rainbow's mouth.
Rainbow gags, sputters, and reaches to her throat. Her face turns bluer as she stumbles around fitfully, wheezing for breath. Finally, she rolls down onto the tiled floor and squeezes a pair of conjoined hooves into her chest over and over and over again. Finally, with the last thrust, she vomits up the golden bit and spits it onto the floor where it rattles around and around before landing tails-up.
Gasping for breath, Rainbow Dash sits up, gulping repeatedly while sticking a disgusted tongue out. Her moist eyes squint up at the machine.
The faint hint of a blue shape reflects off the cold surface of the contraption, as if a singular eye is glaring down at her.
She glares back. Standing up, she makes a fist out of her hoof—preparing to strike the machine once again. At the last second, however, she relaxes. Breathing evenly, Rainbow Dash calms her nerves, turning her nose up like a stylishly dressed Canterlot noble. After straightening her feathers and bangs, she reaches a hoof into her left saddlebag and rummages around. She brushes aside a pair of sunglasses, a Game Colt Advance, and a Wonderbolts Uniform Catalogue in her search. Finally, with much effort, she finds and pulls out a sheet of paper along with a checkbook.
Trotting over to a distant corner, Rainbow Dash plops herself down directly beneath an air conditioning vent. After scribbling an order onto the sheet, she switches to the checkbook and writes a few figures down. Ripping the check out, she folds the sheet of paper around it, then produces an envelope from the saddlebag. Slipping the check and sheet into the envelope, she writes an address on it and slaps a stamp into the corner. She proceeds to lick the envelope closed, grimacing cutely from the ordeal. Then, once the envelope is sufficiently prepared, she marches over to the entrance, opens the door to the desert air, and waits outside, leaning against the front of the building.
Rainbow Dash whistles to herself, brushing specks of dust off her forelimbs and counting the tumbleweeds rolling by. Her tail swings back and forth like a clown-colored pendulum. Eventually, a stagecoach rolls up, being drawn by a stallion mailpony. Rainbow Dash smiles politely to him, gives a salute, and hoofs him the envelope. The stallion bows, rears his hooves, and gallops on down the road.
Rainbow Dash turns around, pulls the door open, and shuffles back into the air conditioned place. She finds a corner, turns around three times, and squats down, her back slumped against the wall, her frowning face locked on her monolothic nemesis from across the far end of the room.
The vending machine squares off against her, cold and humming with refrigerated apathy.
Rainbow Dash blinks at it several times. As the first hour crawls by, she sighs several times, her ears drooped in immeasurable boredom. The second hour drips by. She stifles a yawn and reaches into her saddlebag, pulling out a stupidly thick novel entitled "Daring Do and the Time Traveling Chicken." Flipping through the thick tome, she finds her place and reads a chapter or two. Needless to say, by the third hour, Rainbow Dash is fast asleep, cuddling up against the book like it's a pillow, bestowing it her drool and thunderous snores.
Then—as the bending shadows of the afternoon waft across the desert landscape outside the building—a gray set of hooves land outside the front entrance. The front door opens with a hiss of evacuating A/C.
Rainbow Dash stirs with a trilling sound, rubbing her eyes squinting awake. She wipes the drool from her lips and stands up in a sleepy wobble. As her vision comes to, she sees a pale pegasus shuffling towards her, dragging an enormous cardboard box along the black and white tile.
With a grunt, Derpy Hooves drops the gigantic brown package down in front of Rainbow Dash and salutes. Sticking her tongue out, the wall-eyed mare reaches deep into her mailbag and pulls out a clipboard before hoofing it towards Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow Dash grasps the pen dangling from the clipboard in her teeth. Twisting her head about, she scribbles her signature on the bottom of the delivery form, then relinquishes the pen.
Derpy smiles brightly, staring on either side of Rainbow Dash. She drops the clipboard back into her saddlebag, clears her throat, and extends a hoof.
At first, Rainbow Dash blinks at it with a perplexed expression. She snaps out of it with a knowing breath. Reaching into her saddlebag, she produces three golden bits and deposits them into Derpy's grasp.
Derpy blinks. Her lips frown ever so slightly. Once more, she clears her throat.
Rainbow Dash stares at her. She then rolls her eyes, sighs, and reaches into her saddlebag yet again. This time she produces a plastic-wrapped muffin and thrusts it indignantly before Derpy's muzzle.
Derpy grins wide, snatching the muffin up and juggling it between her wings. With a curtsy, she swivels around and approaches the door. She pulls on it, but the door won't budge. Grunting and struggling, Derpy continues to pull with all her might, her hooves scuffling against the tile floor.
With dull eyes, Rainbow Dash trots over and brushes Derpy aside. Quietly, she pushes the door open with incredible ease.
Derpy's face is red as she smiles nervously at Rainbow, bumps into the doorframe, and eventually trots out into the desert air. With gray wings spread, the mail-mare flies off towards the distant horizon.
Swiveling about, Rainbow Dash squats before the large cardboard box and rubs her hooves together. Her ruby eyes reflect the bold letters splashed against the side of the container, spelling out: "Pony Blaster 16."
With slight fuss, she proceeds to rip the panels of the cardboard box open. An oceanic mess of bubble wrap spills out like translucent entrails. She pulls and tugs at the plastic wrapping until a mass of bundled metal parts slides out of the container. In delicate order, Rainbow Dash places the various pieces of scrap into separate piles. Reaching deep into the box, she next produces a box of metal nuts and bolts, a lead box humming with otherworldly energy, and at last a thick instruction manual printed in tiny font.
Exhaling from the laborious extraction, Rainbow Dash apathetically kicks the empty cardboard box aside. It makes a dull thumping noise as it settles into a corner. Rainbow Dash pauses, glancing over her shoulder at the large, empty box. Something beneath the layers of her blue coat twitches. She ignores it at first, staring over at the piles of assembly parts. But suddenly she pauses, fidgeting fitfully as her eyes dart back and forth. She tongues the inside of her mouth, then breaks forth into a foalish grin.
In a blur, Rainbow Dash dives gleefully into the spacious belly of the cardboard box. The brown container rattles around for a few ecstatic seconds before Rainbow Dash darts back out, taking on an adult posture as she clears her throat. With blushing cheeks, she flicks the box away with her colorful tail hairs and marches under an air of seriousness, shuffling over towards the machine parts.
Squatting down, she opens the instruction manual and scans the first of several... several black and white pages. Over the next hour, Rainbow Dash proceeds to attach metal pieces to other metal pieces, constructing the framework of a diabolical device. A base is formed out of four massive legs. Within the housing of this, she slaps together several cylinders in wicked succession, forming a diabolical rod of sorts.
Another hour passes. Outside, the desert sun bleeds into a crimson sunset. The skeletal body of a massive cannon forms, with a hollow chamber waiting for a power source. Donning a thick mask, Rainbow Dash breathes into a series of plastic tubes as she opens the lead box, exposing a glowing green crystal to the air. The speakers playing the jazz muzak crackle from a heavy static filling the room. With rattling forceps, Rainbow Dash lifts the volatile green shard into place, sealing the energy core behind a black metal panel.
At last, she adds the final touches, fitting a hoof-brace, a trigger, and then iron sights to the end of the weapon. Aiming the violent end of the Pony Blaster 16 towards the unsuspecting vending machine, she finally hammers each of the weapon's four legs into the floor, sending flakes of tile rattling dustily across the corners of the place.
With a heavy exhale, Rainbow Dash peels the mask off her face and squats behind the blaster like an artillery gunner. Licking her lips, Rainbow Dash flips several switches up, powering the infernal heart of the satanically huge cannon. A sickly green glow fills the room, accompanied by a high-pitched whining noise.
The Dr. Pony vending machine stands like a deer in the headlights, unfeeling and unmoving.
Rainbow Dash grits her teeth. Her grip of the gun's hoof-brace shakes as heavy bass vibrations emanate in every direction at once. The air crackles with static. Her hairs rise on end while the dust on the tile floor starts to levitate with alien energy. Bolts of electricity dance between Rainbow's blue ears while sparks shoot across her alabaster white teeth. She sniffles, then feels a dribble of warm moisture across her muzzle. She runs a hoof across her nose and sees blood leaking, but decides to ignore it. By the time her eardrums have popped from the constant whining, the light in the room begins to distort heavily. The windows and ceiling panels appear to bow towards the center of the room as a jet-black vortex forms at the very tip of the hot glowing gun barrel. From her perspective, the far end of the building stretches away while the Dr. Pony machine somehow looms closer. In a blink, Rainbow thinks she spots several alternate universes being born upon the fringes of the quantum singularity being summoned between her and her nemesis.
A bell rings from within the body of the Pony Blaster 16. The cannon's energy core has reached its maximum output, filling the air of the room with sound and fury, signifying nothing. Then, with a maddening warcry, Rainbow Dash eagerly pulls the trigger of the weapon. A pulse of light blossoms from the end of the gun barrel like a great cosmic flower. The center of the room lights up brighter than a hundred of Princess Celestia's combined sunrises. All sound is swallowed up in a grand vacuum. Rainbow Dash loses all concept of time. She blinks—and in that blink she thinks that she is once more inside the womb of her mother. There is a single heartbeat, then something quiet—like the flapping of a housefly's wings—and then all is thunder and mayhem. A colossal wave of energy surges out of the heart of the Pony Blaster 16 and engulfs the vending machine in a vortex of tornadic fury.
Rainbow Dash pumps a hoof, cheering in victory. She watches, grinning demonically in anticipation of the monolithic machine's impending defeat.
The quivering vortex orbits the machine, quivers, then shrinks. The energy field is absorbed by the contraption. All six buttons flicker in succession like the bulbs of a Hearth's Warming Tree. Then—just as soon as the nightmarish cacophony began—everything turns silent. One second drifts by. A second second. Then, quiet as a newborn kitten, the machine whirs from within.
Rainbow Dash gasps. She leans forward with a drooling grin.
The Dr. Pony machine then buzzes.
Rainbow Dash's jaw drops.
Hissing loudly, the vending machine lifts up a foot, spins around, and slams back down. It does so with a violent thunderclap... and it sends the otherworldly wave of energy sailing straight back into the Pony Blaster 16.
The gun glows red hot. The green energy core pulses madly while an alarm bell goes off.
Rainbow Dash's voice cracks forth a distressed yelp. Covering her head, she leaps desperately to the side.
The cannon explodes, sending glowing shrapnel and bits of dull crystal in every direction. The floor is awash in steaming debris as silence once again reigns. All is dead still, aside from the perpetual, undaunted bass hum of the Dr. Pony machine's soulless refrigeration.
Rainbow Dash groans, lying limply on the floor like a coonskin cap. She stumbles up on aching limbs, shaking her disheveled mane loose. Then—seething—she looks up and gives the vending machine the mother of all glares.
The bright Dr. Pony logo reflects her ruby eyes as they produce licking flames.
With a grunt, Rainbow Dash kicks off the battle-strewn tile floor. She flaps her wings and flies around the room, slowly at first, but then picking up speed as she proceeds to orbit the vending machine at a murderous pace. Her flight accelerates exponentially, and soon she is a prismatic blur, a rainbow streak of angry fury that spins and spins and spins-spins-spins-spins around the Dr. Pony machine like an adoracute electron.
A windy tempest picks up, tossing up dust and fragments of metal left and right. The cardboard box is shredded to bits. Several ceiling panels fly loose while the a/c vents rattle in place. Soon, the whole interior of the tiny building is full of color—and every shade of it growing brighter, brighter, brighter... until—
The entire room explodes as the pegasus pulls off the sonic rainboom directly over the body of the hapless vending machine. Every single pane of glass shatters. The black and white tile turn to liquid pulp. The metallic remnants of the Pony Blaster 16 fly off towards the desert horizons surrounding the building as if tossed away by a spectral hurricane.
When the echoes of Rainbow Dash's thunder finally settle, so does she—levitating slowly down with limp wings in the center of the room. Her body sparkles from head to toe with unbridled energy, flickering in and out of this dimensional plane and coloring every inch of her flesh with the monochromatic haze of a corrupted film projection. Slowly, though, she phases back into the real world, her ruby eyes being the first things to solidify. Then comes her blue muzzle as she pants and pants for breath like a hyperventilating little filly bidding her bipedal father a melancholic farewell. Finally, the rest of her sapphiric frames comes into focus as she stands limply before the vibrating machine.
Slowly, like a tuning fork coming to a whimpering death, the monolith with the Dr. Pony logo falls still.
Rainbow Dash gulps hard. She smiles up at the glistening device and leans forward—
It dings. It pops out a bottle. It's purple.
Rainbow Dash blinks. She slumps down on her haunches. Her mouth hangs open, and then her lips quiver. She hangs her head, and a sniffle comes out... then a second. She clenches her eyes shut, fighting against all measure to hold in warm, salty tears.
Just then, the softest quartet of hooves imaginable lands outside the shattered building.
Rainbow Dash gasps, sitting straight up with wide, twitching eyes. She glances over her shoulder.
Humming to herself, Fluttershy walks casually up to the entrance of the place. She pulls the door open—only for the battered thing to collapse off its hinges. Fluttershy squeaks in fright, then exhales in relief. Daintily, she dance-steps over the piles of broken glass shards and trots towards the far end of the building.
Rainbow Dash instantly hides her face, wincing, for fear that her friend might see the mistiness in her eyes.
She doesn't. Fluttershy merely donates Rainbow Dash a pleasant smile. Humming the chorus to a cheery song, she approaches the machine and reaches into her velvety soft saddlebags.
Stifling another sniffle, Rainbow Dash squints and watches Fluttershy in mute fashion.
Fluttershy pulls out a golden bit. However, instead of grasping it in her teeth, she loops the very end of her slender pink tail-hairs around the glinting coin. Then, with expert grace, she pivots around and lifts the bit up to the coin insert. Slowly, slowly, she dips the bit down the body of the slot. She lifts a rear hoof and presses it against the topmost button along the panel.
Rainbow Dash tilts her head aside, her face scrunched in curiosity.
Predictably, the machine whirs as it registers Fluttershy's request. However, just as there is the faintest of tugs to the coin, Fluttershy swiftly yanks the bit straight out. The machine doesn't stop processing, though. As a matter of fact, what's left of the room resonates a delightful ding, and something rattles to a stop in the bottle dispenser.
Rainbow Dash blinks.
Fluttershy reaches in and pulls her hoof out, grasping a bottle of delicious Dr. Pony, glistening all over with sweaty condensation. Using her teeth, the pegasus unscrews the cap. She then takes a deep breath and chugs the carbonated beverage mightily.
Rainbow Dash gawks at this, her jaw dropping more and more as an envious sheen glitters across her sad ruby eyes.
Finally, Fluttershy finishes gulping half of the bottle down. She exhales, bearing a rosy-cheeked grin. The tiniest of belches escapes her mouth, and she covers her lip with a look of horror. Then, with a nervous squee, she pockets the bottle into her saddlebag and trots gaily for the exit.
Rainbow Dash's gaze follows her. Her face washes over with sorrow. Sighing heavily, she hangs her head, gazing at the rubble-strewn floor with somber defeat.
Fluttershy sees this. She pauses at the building's exit, her aquamarine eyes blinking thoughtfully. Just then, a warm smile crosses her lips. She turns about-face and trots straight back to the vending machine.
Rainbow Dash glances up, gazing out the corner of her teary eyes.
Fluttershy once more lifts a coin up by her tail and down the machine’s slot. Repeating her expert motions from earlier, she coaxes the contraption into dispensing another bottle. Then, with a friendly smile, she hoofs the glistening bottle of ice cold Dr. Pony towards Rainbow.
Rainbow Dash exhales heavily. She reaches a shaky hoof towards the bottle. Once she grasps it, a shudder of delight runs straight up and down her body. She holds the heavenly quaff like a mother would cradle a newborn foal.
Fluttershy merely giggles. She leans in and nuzzles Rainbow Dash dearly.
Rainbow takes the brunt of the soft embrace, her cheeks aflame as she bears a humble smile.
Fluttershy winks at her friend. Waving, she flaps her wings and flies happily out of the ruined building, humming the same tune that she was when she first entered the place.
Rainbow Dash watches her leave, hugging the bottle of Dr. Pony close to her fuzzy blue chest. She exhales long and hard, smiling from the warm toasty magic of friendship. With a dry chuckle, she grips the end of the bottle and unscrews the cap.
And then the entire contents of the soda explode in her face, knocking her back on her flank.
The End
Special Thanks to Pilate and Noble Jury