Having qualified for the Aerial Relay event, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Bulk Biceps and their friends travel to the Crystal Empire to participate in the Equestria Games alongside four other teams. Honour, glory and gold are at stake as the ponies prepare to take up their positions. But after Rainbow Dash accidentally bumps into an old acquaintance before the performance, strange things begin to happen.

What unseen trials will the trio of teammates face on the event grounds and skies? Which threatening series of events will occur involving the audience and Rainbow's friends? And what was that barely-discernible streak of brown high up in the clouds? Most importantly, what is the ultimate motive behind these seemingly unrelated incidents?

Written before the Equestria Games episode aired in Season Four, this story offers an alternate take on the action and drama that would come from the big race set up in the Rainbow Falls episode.

The plot turned me off. Completely. Whatever plan the author had for this story was broken from the start. The twists and turns during the race itself made no sense, exacerbated by the one colossal issue I had with the writing.

To set the scene: the Ponyville team is getting ready for the race, and Rainbow Dash runs into Lightning Dust backstage. Dust apologizes for her actions and claims to be the manager for another team, and everything's cool. There's the pageantry of the entrances of the teams, Twilight and her friends are sitting in the box with the other princesses, so on and so forth. Everything's fine until the race starts.

Halfway through the first leg of the relay, where team members need to fly through a set of rings several times, Celestia casts a spell that sets the rings on fire.

Oh, but it's just an illusion, as the story explains. No one is in any real danger. Which does nothing to change the fact that the competition stops dead in its tracks as the racers take stock of the situation. Nor does it change the fact that Twilight was seemingly the only pony in a position of power not to know this was coming.

Seriously, Ms. Harshwhinny, professionalism ponysonified, was perfectly okay with this. She was perfectly okay with letting competitors train for months, maybe years--even a lifelong dream in Rainbow Dash's case--and then ripping the rug out from under them by changing the rules on the fly.

What if rodeo clowns were set loose to run on the pitch in a World Cup match? Imagine it: players at the top of their game, realizing their dreams, representing their countries, deciding the best in the world... and then suddenly clowns. Oh, but don't worry. The clowns are under strict orders not to touch anyone as they run across the field once or twice. That certainly won't interfere with play at all.

It gets worse.

The second leg of the relay requires the flyers to catch up with their target cloud, which flies away as it reacts to a band around their hooves. The competitors must push themselves to a 150 bpm heart rate in order for their cloud to slow down. Or wait five minutes for their cloud to teleport to one side on the field and then race over while it's stationary.

This shits on the first leg of the race. Those racers' bravery for flying through fire now doesn't mean a damn thing because, as the story puts it, better conditioned athletes take longer to reach 150 bpm. So any lead from the faster teams now goes right out the window. What, you guys actually spent time and energy training for a race? Fuck you! Ha ha ha!

Then it shits on the second leg of the race, because when Fluttershy finally manages to reach 150 bpm, her cloud teleports to the other end of the field anyway. So after torturing herself, she now has fly hundreds of meters in order to pass her baton.

Beating her wings as hard as she could, she chased the ring in circles, zig-zags, sweeping bends and ground-bound dives. Before long her muscles were aching in protest, yet still she persisted. Her breathing became ragged, her shallow breaths hardly fulfilling her oxygen requirements from her screaming, demanding lungs.

Twenty seconds later, a beep sounded from Fluttershy’s leg as she gasped for air. Her quarry immensely reduced its evasion speed. She sighed in relief, even as her wings threatened to give out. Lightly flying through the ring, she turned back to face it as a golden aura enveloped it. Instantly, the now-golden ring floated hundreds of metres away at the other end of the stadium. Before taking off, she cast a final appraising glance around at her competition; only Merry May’s ring had turned gold like hers.

I'm not joking. She caught her cloud and then had to catch up to it again. Harshwhinny was a part of this. Shining Armor was a part of this because he explained the rules as they changed over the loudspeakers. The princesses were a part of this. They are literally moving the goalposts in the middle of the game. Fuck you, racers! Ha ha ha!

It gets worse.

Luna summons a dragon illusion to chase after the racers.

A full grown dragon. The size of the arena.

Some of them just jacked their heart rates into the red zone. And Luna drops a fuck-mothering dragon on their tails.

Oh, but Fluttershy's friends shouldn't worry. It's just an illusion again. In spite of the fact that Fluttershy loses consciousness after her part is over and does in fact require medical attention. Ponies with a stretcher need to fly up and meet her as she drops from the sky. So, yes, someone actually got hurt because of these stupid tricks they're playing on the racers.

Luna tries to wave away Rarity's concern over all of this. But it unfortunately leads to this:

“Your question is justified, fair Rarity,” Luna replied. “Alas, our aim was not to scare any athlete to death, but rather to inspire courage and determination in each of them.

Alas.

Alas.

Regretfully, she wasn't able to try and scare them to death. Implying she wanted to do worse than a dragon.

I'm willing to call this an innocent mistake, and that the author wasn't trying to make Luna sound like a sociopath. But the timing of this was just... just too much. My head was still reeling from the dragon attack, I was feeling embarrassed for the characters after being jerked around by the princesses the way they were, and then Luna wanted to mentally torture them. I raked a hand down my face while muttering "Oh my fucking God."

To address Luna's points about inspiring courage and her later statement about the spirit of the Games--and to elaborate on why I felt embarrassed for the characters--I have to point out how the princesses' illusions shit all over the race. The rings of fire, the cloud trick, the dragon, they brought the action to a screeching halt. Advantages weren't won or lost because of athletic ability, or from some skill or choice made by the pony in the arena like any real sport (or even a video game). The teams' progress in the game stopped because something got thrown in from outside. Multiple times. Multiple times in one leg. Luna's spirit of the Games kicked the spirit of competition right square in the balls.

So, were the relay teams the only ones? I think so. Based on Twilight's surprise I don't think she had seen any kind of outside trickery during any other events in the Games. So what the hell? Why were the relays teams singled out? Why weren't they given the decency of a level playing field like every other competitor? Why did they have to dance on strings? Why was all the time and effort they put into training disrespected like this? Why were they the ones put at risk for goddamn heart attacks? If you need to arrange extra medical attention behind someone's back "Just in case" before they blindly go into something you set up, then you are taking advantage of them.

Celestia. Luna. Cadance. Shining Armor. Harshwhinny. All five of them knew they were pulling the wool over fifteen racers' eyes, and they were okay with it. All five of them knew the hard work the fifteen racers put into preparing for the race, and they were okay with throwing it aside.

I did finish the story. Luna's "Alas" line made me check out, but the entire thing was just a few thousand words more than our minimum. I just didn't care about any of it. The third leg of the race (a glorified easter egg hunt--find one special cloud in a huge bank of them) is sabotaged by two certain someones trying to throw the race in one team's favor. What, were readers supposed to feel outraged they were fucking with some of the teams rather than fucking with all of the teams like the princesses? They were still just fucking with teams. The novelty was long, long gone.

There's also a subplot where Pinkie plays inspector again. It's there to make Twilight and Cadance feel less like deus ex machina at the end of the story. It's... there.

I think I'm done here. I don't like dipping into Rage Review territory with my stuff in this group, but this one just left me flabbergasted. Forget the mechanics of this story or any kind of tricks an author might use in writing, the actual in-universe story that plays out doesn't work. Forget the competition concerns I raised, I don't buy that the five characters I pointed out would be so asinine as to pull these stunts. I don't buy that Twilight and Rarity would so easily accept the princesses' logic. I don't buy anything about this.

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I remember this one. And yeah... checking back. I had the same problems with the obstacles. They really sucked and, like you said fucked with the racers.

People are only human. Sometimes raging at a fic is the only answer.

Also, that Fluttershy pic!

Oh hey, this group is still a thing. Good review as always, man!

Great review, ME. I feel the same way as you do; now that I've had so much more writing practice and advice from people, even I can look back on this and wonder what the hell I was doing.

Weird as this is gonna sound, I think the Pinkie mystery scenes are the best part (If any of this can be considered good). They were certainly the most fun scenes to write, which itself should have set alarm bells ringing in my head as I wrote it.

I like the art a lot though. Had it all commissioned.

Thank you for taking your time and sticking with the story.