Rainbow Dash sat on the pliable cloudstuff floor of the gymnasium of another junior flight school and watched the class of foals clumsily race around the edge of the open ceiling. Her flightsuit, trademark Wonderbolt blue and gold, felt tight against her skin, and she would probably start chafing soon. The teacher sat beside her and winked and smiled anytime Dash looked over. Dash didn’t know why. The teacher could have been trying to flirt, but twenty years of wiping green dribbling snot off of foals’ chins had soured whatever talent for flirtation she might have once possessed. Rainbow Dash ignored her.

In her short tenure on the team, Dash had learned that being a Wonderbolt was ninety-five percent awesome and five percent stupid. Ninety-five percent practicing with the team, traveling all over Equestria, performing shows, signing autographs, staying at all the nicest hotels, and eating at all the best restaurants. Five percent wasting time shaking hooves at public events and meeting and greeting pseudo-fans at pointless meet and greets.

The Wonderbolts visited schools more than anything else. Rainbow Dash had probably spent more time in school as in official visitations as a Wonderbolt than she ever had as a student.

The foals still had another few laps to go. They jostled and kicked and shouted at each other and pulled each other’s tails as they flew. Looked pretty rough, actually. Dash even saw one colt with a gray mane bite some poor filly. Dash glanced at the teacher to see if she was going to do anything about it, but she just smiled and winked back at her.

Rainbow Dash still ignored her. Dash both liked and disliked visiting schools. She disliked that it took so much time out of flying. She had become a Wonderbolt to fly, not sit around and watch a bunch of foals tear into each other in a desperate bid for her attention. But she liked that all the visits to schools were solo, one Wonderbolt per school. When Rainbow Dash visited a school, the spotlight was all hers. Schools practically made a holiday out of it. Rainbow Dash the Wonderbolt is Coming Day! She had already gotten at least four schoolwide pizza parties thrown in her favor. But it was still school, and school was still lame.

Schools were nothing but bratty, sticky kids (and it always amazed Rainbow Dash how sticky they always felt when they touched her. Like, did they roll around in their own saliva and snot all night before coming to school?), and half-crazed teachers (and the teachers were always weird. Rainbow figured spending all your days with inexplicably sticky kids must have been mental-illness inducing). But Rainbow Dash liked kids, besides their sticky hooves. Kids had a shouting, cheering enthusiasm for the Wonderbolts that was more genuine and loud than anything she ever got from the adults.

But Rainbow hated, hated, hated the lies, all the lying she had to do every time she visited a school.

“That’s it!” the teacher said, stomping her hooves on the ground.

The race was over. The foals glided down to the floor. About half of them landed on their hooves. The rest landed on their tails, their sides, or their faces, but that’s what the cloudstuff flooring was for.

Rainbow Dash looked them over. The one who had won, a filly with a pink mane, had some potential. The rest didn’t have any chance at careers in professional flying. When Dash had first arrived she asked who in the class wanted to be a Wonderbolt when they grew up. About half the foals had raised their hooves—a tragedy.

Dash figured it was time for congratulations and encouragements and lies. But congratulations first.

She stepped up to pink-maned filly and smiled. “That was awesome, kid,” Dash said. “You’ve got great wing control and a smart sense for finding good updrafts and air currents.”

The filly grinned. “Really?”

The teacher nodded to her. “You did very well, Spring Blossom.”

“Yeah,” Dash said. “Just try to stay tight up there. Keep your hooves together, and your wings should never be extended during a race unless you’re gaining altitude or gliding. Otherwise, keep them out but close, like this.”

As Rainbow Dash demonstrated, the colt she had seen biting somepony in the air stomped over, an expression on his face like someone had just knocked an ice cream cone out of his hooves, and kicked Spring Blossom in the leg.

She cried out and fell hard on her side.

“Storm Wind!” The teacher ran to Spring Blossom and kneeled over her. “Are you all right, dear?”

She held her ankle. “My leg hurts.”

The teacher glared at the colt, who stood beside the stricken filly, looking angry and lost. “You’re in big trouble.”

The colt looked up at Rainbow Dash, eyes watering. He turned and ran to the gymnasium door.

“Storm Wind, you come back here right this instant!” the teacher shouted after him, but he pushed the door open and went out.

“I can’t believe him.” The teacher looked between Spring Blossom, still lying on the floor, and the door.

“I’ll go get him,” Dash said. “You can stay with her.”

“Thank you,” the teacher said. “Tell him to come right back here and that the longer he waits the worse trouble he’ll be in.”

Dash nodded and walked across the gymnasium and then out the door.

The colt was standing by the door, glaring at the floor. He hadn’t made it very far. He looked up when Rainbow Dash came into the hallway, then lowered his head again. He was one of the kids who had raised their hooves when Dash asked who wanted to be a Wonderbolt.

“Your teacher says you’re in trouble,” Dash said.

He kept his eyes down.

“You should probably get back in there.”

He stayed put.

“You know you’re just making it worse for yourself by running away, right?”

He nodded.

“What you did in there was really lame,” Dash said. “And no pony who does something like that is ever going to be let in the Wonderbolts. Especially if they can’t even face up to it and apologize after.”

He started making sniffling noises, and his chest shook and his legs trembled, and he wiped at his eyes.

Rainbow Dash sighed. She hated when she made the kids cry. Spitfire was gonna give her another earful about properly representing the team while on visits when Dash got back. Dash moved closer to the colt and cautiously touched him on the shoulder in case of sticky. “Ah, calm down, kid. That girl didn’t look like she was that hurt. If you go back and say sorry now, you probably won’t get in really bad trouble. Just regular bad trouble.”

The colt cried harder.

Rainbow Dash frowned. She sucked at dealing with the foals. “So… why’d you hit her?”

The colt cried some more. There may have been a few blubbered words in between the sobs, but Dash couldn’t make them out.

“Did you think you should have won instead of her?” Dash asked.

“No,” he said, choking back his tears. “She’s better than me.”

“Was it, uh, just because she won and you didn’t?”

The colt nodded. “A little.”

“And what else? Do you have a crush on her or something?”

The colt made a face and wiped at his nose and eyes. “Ew. No. I just…”

“Didn’t like her manecut?” Dash suggested. “I used to think pink was a really lame mane color, too. But now I have this friend who’s, like, just super pink all over, and she’s awesome. So pink is okay, I guess.”

“I wanted it to be me,” the colt said, the last of his sobs fading away.

“Well, yeah. Everyone wanted to win. That’s the whole point of the race.”

“I wanted it to be me,” the colt said, and looked up at her, eyes red and wet. “I wanted it to be me who you came and talked to and told me how good I was at flying.”

Rainbow Dash chuckled. “I was gonna talk to all of you. You could have waited your turn.”

“It wouldn’t have been the same. I got fifth place, and no pony cares about fifth place. You wouldn’t have talked to me the same way you talked to her. I want to be a Wonderbolt so bad, but I’m not good enough at flying. And then our teacher told us you were coming, and I worked really hard so I could win a race in front of you and would see me and talk to me, but everypony in class is still better than me, and Spring Blossom is way better than me, and she always will be, and you and the other Wonderbolts are never going to care about me.” He sniffled again. “I shouldn’t have hit her. I’m sorry.”

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. It was time for the lies to start. The same lies she told all the other kids. She had never had to lie to a colt one-on-one before, though, and definitely never a colt who was crying. It’d probably feel even worse this time. “Do you think winning is all that matters?” she asked, prepping her little speech.

“Losers don’t get to become Wonderbolts,” he said.

“You’re wrong,” Rainbow Dash lied. “When I was in school, I lost almost every race. And now I’m a Wonderbolt.”

“I bet you win races now.”

“Winning isn’t what matters. Doing is what matters,” Dash lied and lied. “A Wonderbolt doesn’t care just about winning, a Wonderbolt cares about doing the very best she possibly can every single time she flies. A Wonderbolt doesn’t care about doing better than everypony else in the air, a Wonderbolt cares about trying harder than everypony else in the air. A Wonderbolt learns from her mistakes, remembers them, and then doesn’t make them again next time. And the most important thing is improving. It’s not about being better than the other pony, it’s about being better than yourself the last time you flew.”

“You sound like one of the posters on our classroom wall.”

“Is this the closest you’ve ever come to beating Spring Blossom in a race?” Dash asked.

“Probably…”

“Then you improved! You won because you did better than yourself. You probably did even better than Spring Blossom did, then. I doubt she improved half as much as you did since your last race. You should be really proud of that. Anyone can be good, but it takes a really cool kind of pony to be good and then get better.”

“Yeah?” he asked, looking up at her, eyes dry and trusting.

“Yeah,” Dash lied, lied, lied. “You’re awesome. But I already know that. Go show everyone else by apologizing to her, because what you did was really sucky.”

“All right!” He grinned at her, turned around, and marched back through the gymnasium doors with childish enthusiasm.

The door closed behind him.

Rainbow Dash stared at the closed door for a long while.

She walked down the hallway, away from the door. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew she couldn’t stand going back into that gymnasium yet. She felt sick. Her stomach hurt. She could handle the lying, but it sucked that they always believed her. She gave them expectations and hopes that could never ever be fulfilled, and the kids ate them up like Hearth’s Warming cookies and took them inside and held them there. Held them inside, where they would fester and rot. Where they would come back up years later, sodden and black when the kids were grown up and knew the truth. They would remember Rainbow Dash. They would remember that she had been the one who planted the ill seed in their hearts, and realize that Dash had done so knowingly. And they would hate her for it.

There were ponies out there who hated her. That didn’t bother her so much, though. It bothered her that she deserved it.

The kid was right. No one cared about fifth place, and never would. No one cheered for fifth place. No one congratulated fifth place. No one remembered fifth place. If Rainbow Dash never placed anything better than fifth in her life, she wouldn’t even bother flying, and that kid shouldn’t, either. She couldn’t understand why anyone other than first, second, and third even competed, why they wasted their time.

But she did understand.

It was because liars like her told them to.

She walked down the hallway, past school bulletin boards warning her not to run in the hall and what was for lunch. Her hooves sounded loud on the floor of the empty hall.

Winning was all that mattered. First place was everything. Being anything less than the best in the air meant you either weren’t trying hard enough or you were playing the wrong sport. Ponies cared about first place. Ponies remembered first place. Ponies fell in love with first place. Ponies loved Rainbow Dash, and they loved her for being the best. Who would care about her if she placed fifth?

Only the liars.

Trying to do your best didn’t make any difference if your best wasn’t better than everyone else’s. Improvement didn’t make any difference if it didn’t move you from second to first.

The Wonderbolts were Wonderbolts because they won. A Wonderbolt didn’t place fifth.

The Wonderbolts did their best and strived to improve, obviously, but they did so much more. A Wonderbolt worked harder than that foal could imagine. Rainbow Dash had once skipped school everyday for a week and did nothing all day except practice her takeoffs, again and again and again, trying to make it perfect, make it exactly how she saw the Wonderbolts do it. She only stopped when her parents dragged her back to class.

And it hadn’t been enough. Years afterwards, she still practiced her takeoffs. Even now, a Wonderbolt, her takeoffs weren’t perfect. She still had to work at them. And taking off was such a miniscule aspect of a full flight routine, barely a second’s worth of a show. Everything else required exactly the same level of repetitive, monotonous, exhausting struggle.

Could that colt ever understand what becoming a Wonderbolt really required? Did he have the slightest idea? Any hint at all?

There wasn’t any waiting, either. There was no such thing as ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a Wonderbolt.’ Either you started training every single day when you were a foal, or you didn’t become a Wonderbolt. Flying couldn’t be a hobby or something you did in your time off. Flying had to be your life. Even by adolescence, you’d already be so far surpassed by the flyers who had started training as foals that you never had any hope of catching up.

Unless a liar like Rainbow Dash came by and gave it to them, gave them hope and expectations that could never come true.

Rainbow Dash realized that she had reached the end of the hallway. The school entrance, wide double doors, stood before her. Outside, she could see the sky. She should have left. She should have left before she lied to anyone else, before she poisoned anyone else’s thoughts.

Even if that colt started training right now, doing all the work necessary, he might never become a Wonderbolt, because he hadn’t been born right. Something no one liked to talk about. Ponies preferred to say ‘You can do anything when you grow up.’ Another lie.

A Wonderbolt had to be born right, and that colt wasn’t.

Rainbow Dash figured Twilight was the best pony there had ever been at magic. A lot of that was thanks to the tremendous amount of work she had put into her magical studies. But another unicorn could do an equal amount of studying and still never be as good as Twilight, because Twilight had been born better. She had been born with more innate magic, more natural aptitude for spells and spell theory, more inherent ability than probably any unicorn before her, besides maybe Celestia and Luna.

A Wonderbolt had to be born the same way. They had to be born with more innate pegasus magic than other pegasus ponies, with better wings, better muscles, a greater natural understanding of how the air moves and how to not only move along with it, but how to manipulate it and make it work for you.

Some ponies were born with more potential than others. Or, as Rainbow Dash liked to put it, some ponies were born awesome, and some weren’t. It was the same with everything a pony could do—art, math, science—all the same.

Spring Blossom might have a had a chance. She had some natural ability that most pegasus ponies her age didn’t, pegasus ponies like Storm Wind.

“There you are!” a voice said behind Rainbow Dash.

Dash turned and saw the teacher standing behind her.

“You just disappeared,” the teacher said. “I thought you’d gotten lost.”

“I have to leave,” Dash said.

The teacher frowned. “Oh, already? Why?”

“Something came up.”

“Can’t you at least say goodbye to the class first?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. She couldn’t look at that colt again. The worst of it was that he had been on the cusp of realizing it all for himself. He had almost realized that he didn’t have any chance of ever being a Wonderbolt, of being anything more than fifth place. But Rainbow had retarded his development with false kindness and meaningless cliches, and for no reason other than to make him feel better. What would a few weeks of feeling nice compare to years of frustration at never coming in first? Of knowing he had wasted so many years for nothing but fifth place?

If Rainbow Dash was the good pony she claimed to be, she would go back to that class and tell him the truth. He hadn’t been born right. He didn’t work hard enough. He wasn’t good enough, and he never would be.

“All right,” Rainbow said, turning away from the doors. “All right, I’ll go say goodbye first.”

“Great!” the teacher said. “They’re all back in class now. You know, they loved your visit, and all of us at the school really appreciate it. It’s great that the Wonderbolts come to schools like these to inspire the students. Everypony was so excited when we heard.”

Rainbow Dash kept her mouth shut.

Dash followed the teacher back to their classroom and went in with her. She said a quick goodbye to the students, not looking any of them in the eye. Then she told the teacher that she needed to speak to Storm Wind again in the hallway, alone. She went out of the classroom and into the hallway before the teacher could respond.

She waited in the hall.

The door opened after a short time, and the colt stepped tentatively into the hall.

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. “Kid,” she began.

But he ran at her before she could say anything more. He hugged her, and Rainbow’s voice choked in her throat. He didn’t really hug her. He was too small. He could only get his hooves around one of her legs, but he held tight. He felt vaguely sticky.

“Thank you,” he said.

Rainbow Dash could say nothing, could think of nothing.

He pulled back, looking embarrassed. “Just… thank you,” he said again.

Rainbow Dash stared down at him. Her stomach felt like she had just eaten large order of hayfries then done a dozen somersaults in a row. Her head reeled. Her mind emptied.

“What did you need to talk to me about?” he asked.

“I…” Rainbow Dash couldn’t even remember what she had meant to say. “I just wanted you to know… that I believe in you.”

“What?”

Rainbow Dash turned and ran away. She ran all the way to the exit, her steps sounding loud as thunderclaps. She went outside. She threw up by the door.

She left, leaving behind her festering lies. She jumped into the air and went far away from the school, knowing she would sow all the same lies in the hearts of the next foals she met.