//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 - The Bowling Game (Part 1) // Story: Dadonequus Discord (Book 2) // by CrazedLaughter //------------------------------// Spike pulls out the custom ball from his bag and holds it up “Alright guys, here it is, the weapon we’ll use to fell these foul beasts.” Big Mac just looks at Spike silently, with judging eyes. Spike, realizing he still is kind of railing against his sister and her group, eases off for a moment. But this was only a moment until he realized that they were still a team and this was still a competition. “C’mon, Big Mac, you can’t be hard on us just because your sister is on the other team. Besides, you’re the one who even set this all up. How are we supposed to do our best if you’re just gonna complain at us for even saying anything?” Applebloom hops down from her seat and pats her brother’s side to get his attention “He’s kind of right, Big Mac. It’s us versus you, remember? You can be a little extra competitive if ya want, just don’t be all mean about it, ok?” Big Mac looks down at Applebloom, who reassures him again that it’s alright, as does the rest of the CMC. He really didn’t want to be super competitive against his kin, but he did start to realize that this was all his doing in the first place. “Ok…” He then looks to Spike with a nod “Alright Spike, Let’s get to fellin’ those beasts then. You don’t mind us callin’ you that, right Applebloom?” Applebloom shrugs “Ah don’t mind as long as you don’t really mean it” Babs then jumps from her seat as she gives Big Mac a reassuring nod and a cocky smirk “Don’t sweat it anyway, don’t you all know that being called a beast means you turn all the guys against you into mush? It ain’t no big, because we are gonna beast these guys into paste” She then reassured her team. And that’s when you notice it. A competitive spark hit Big Mac that, while subtle to everyone else, it was something you could spot due to him giving Babs a quick narrow eyed glance. Finally, there was going to be a game, and no one was going to hold back. So Spike once again holds up the ball and calls for the three of you “Alright guys, place your hooves and paws...or whatever... onto the ball and let us summon forth the power of the bowling gods to aid us on our journey!” Big Mac just lets out a “Eeyup” as he places his hoof on the ball. “Oh, I’m very into this right now. FOR GLORY! FOR ALL THE PATRONS OF THIS FAIR BOWLING ALLEY WILL KNOW OF OUR MIGHT!” Discord completely gets into it, and places his paw on the ball. He was ready to win, at seemingly any cost. As for you, you were now more focused on Babs then you were Sweetie Belle. She had a lot of sass, but she obviously didn’t realize what she was dealing with. Even if she was good, half her team was donkey dick at this game. This was in the bag for sure. So you place your hoof on the ball, and let out a warcry “FOR ‘THE GUILD’! YEEEAAHH!” After everyone broke off, Spike stepped up to the lane to throw the first ball. You all cheered him on as he carefully eyed his target and prepared to throw. He stood there for a few moments, nodded, and finally threw. His technique wasn’t bad either, as he ended up knocking down every pin but the 7th and 10th, an easy spare for sure. “C’mon Spike! You can do it!” You cheer. He was confident, he raised his hand to signal for silence as he concentrated once more. And again, he shows his skill as he expertly gets the spare. Not bad for a start. Spike stepped back to the team sofa with a satisfied smile on his face. He sat down, and wrote the spare on the team scorecard. “There we go, not bad if I do say so myself.” “Indeed, all we need to do is roll at the pace of spares and strikes and we’ll have this game in the bag.” Discord says as he leans back and relaxes, feeling sure that his group can win the game. “Applebloom, you’re up” Scootaloo says as she stares at her team’s scorecard, ready to write down whatever score Applebloom gets while wishing for a strike. “You can do it, Applebloom! Get that strike!” Sweetie Belle cheers. Applebloom nods to her group and takes her generic black ball to the lane. She places it down and tries to figure out how to roll the ball to the lane. When she thinks she’s got it, she goes to put the ball in her mouth and throw. But Babs, upon seeing such a technique, jumps from her seat to give her cousin a few pointers “Woah! Woah! Applebloom, what are ya doing? That’s all wrong!” Applebloom puts the ball down and looks to Babs with confusion “It is? But uh, how else am I supposed to get it down the lane?” “Oh geez” Babs puts her hoof to her face and shakes it slowly, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “C’mon, how are you supposed to aim at anything with your mouth? Look, you want to win? Then listen to your cousin.” “Erm, ok, but what am I supposed to do then?” Applebloom asked, curious as to what Babs had in mind. “Well, it’s simple really.” Babs holds the flat of her right hoof straight up “You balance the ball on the frog of your hoof like this, use your eyes to mark your target, then with a downward like curve, you roll that ball right to the darn target! Got it? It’s easy, Applebloom. So get that strike already!” Applebloom nods with determination “Thanks Babs! You can count on me!” With that, Applebloom carefully lowers herself to get the ball on the frog of her hoof. Holy shit, what a shitshow, she was wobbling and shaking in an attempt to even balance the damn thing. You look over to the other CMC, even they were fucking sweating it now. You started to feel a little bad now, their poor little hearts were going to be crushed if this was a blowout game. After a few more moments, Applebloom finally balanced the ball on her hoof, eyed the center pin, and with a swift movement, she managed to throw the ball accurately enough to….GET A STRIKE?! OH FUCKING WHAT?! You could only sit there with your mouth hung open as Applebloom did a little dance in triumph. After she calmed down, she went to sit on her seat with a cute and satisfied little smile. “Woah, how did you manage to do that, Applebloom?” Scootaloo asked, amazed at Applebloom’s sudden skill. “Ah just did what mah cousin Babs told me. I could feel it, the balance of the ball on my hoof. All ah had to do was throw it after that. It’s just like doing farmwork back home, ya just got to handle the ball like a farm tool and you’re good to go.” Applebloom replies. Big Mac was up next. Ok, it’s fine, Applebloom is a farmhorse after all, and that technique Babs taught her can’t apply to someone like Sweetie Belle. Just relax, Anon, it’s still the beginning. “Interesting…” You hear Discord say “Hm? What’s interesting?” You ask him, wondering what he meant. “We could, in fact, have a close game going on here. “ Discord replies, then eyes Big Mac as he misses a few of the pins “Or we could even end up losing.” Discord summons up a drink, and takes a sip while still remaining rather calm despite a guy like him not usually taking well to coming even close to losing. “I mean, all we have to do is step up our game a little.” You then notice that Big Mac thankfully picks up the spare “What, are you scared we might lose or something? Relax, they may have a strike, but that’s probably one of the few their going to get. Besides...erm.” You start to realize that maybe you were being too much of a dick, it was just a friendly game after all, there was no reason to shake your friendship with the CMC due to it. This was especially true for Scootaloo, who you were closest to out of the three. “It doesn’t matter who wins, just as long as we all had fun” “Already bowing out of the challenge then, are we? Anon, you may not realize what I’m doing, but I am reconstructing my entire being to make sure that I bowl the perfect game.” Discord says. Despite him saying that, he didn’t really seem to be changing at all. Even then, that didn’t sound right to you. “I’m not bowing out of the game, Discord, I just think that maybe I came on a little too strong. Also, isn’t that cheating? C’mon, if you want to win, then do it without cheating. Trust me, cheating to win just to win just feels all kinds of empty.” You explain to him. Cheating, really? Even you wouldn’t stoop that low. It’s like hacking in a game. Unless you’re doing it to troll, then it isn’t any fun. And the CMC were not the three you wanted to troll, even if Sweetie herself was kind of a dick. “It’s not cheating.” Discord says as he eyes Sweetie Belle. He watches her try to make the same attempt Applebloom did, but it ends with only two pins being knocked down. “I will still have to use my own skill to actually throw the ball, but my body will be the equivalent of the best bowler in Equestria. The spin, the power, the technique, all will be available to me when I...AHA! There we go!” Discord raises his talons, only for them not to be talons anymore. No, now it had become a fucking human arm and hand. “HOLY CELESTIA! WHAT IS THAT FREAKY THING?!” Spike notices Discord’s arm, and freaks out at, what he feels, is bizarre and grotesque. In fact, many of the others around the bowling alley take notice due to Spike’s shriek and either freak out, nearly puke, or even faint. Scootaloo however, actually finds it pretty cool and approaches Discord for a closer look. She seemed a little hesitant to ask Discord about it at first. But then she looks to you, she then figures it’d be ok since nothing bad should happen if she asks him, and if it did, that you’d stop it real quick. “So...er...Discord, what’s that? I know you do all kinds of chaos magic, but I’ve never seen anything like that before.” A human arm? Seriously?! It had burly body hair and ugly crusty nails and everything. But still, it didn’t look that bad! What, does that mean that if you were human that all the ponies would run away from you like you were some kind of monster?! Goddamn it...You remembered your old human form. Come on, one of the ponies would think you’d be sexy, right?...Right? Ugh, just seeing how the ponies reacted made you put your face on the table. Discord stands up with a smile and gives Scootaloo a gentle pat with his paw as he grips his human hand a few times. “A bit of an evolution of sorts. A human hand, to be exact. I’m merely going to use it to help me grip the ball and throw it down the lane.” “A human hand? You mean like that thing Anon...erm..” Scootaloo quieted down,Not everyone knew of your secret, and she didn’t want to be the one to spill the beans. “I mean, cool...but, wait…” She then realized something else, the same thing you thought of actually. “Isn’t that cheating?” Discord chortles as he picks up the ball and prepares himself “Of course not! Haha! That’s such nonsense. As I said to Anon, it’s simply to help me grip this ball, not to make the perfect strike or anything. Why would I want to roll a perfect game anyway? I wouldn’t want to humiliate you, the fine patrons of this establishment, and everypony who’s ever bowled a perfect game for themselves for the VERY FIRST TIME THEY ACTUALLY PLAYED!” Discord practically screams out those last words. Cripes, he didn’t even care about beating the CMC in all actuality, he just wanted to crush the whole fucking bowling scene. It seemed he actually wanted the perfect fucking score. “I mean, umm...erm…” Scootaloo just couldn’t hold it in “That still sounds like cheating to me” “Yeah, something ain’t right around here…” Babs gets up to inspect Discord’s arm, blowing away some of her mane aside to get a better look “How do we really know you ain’t going to cheat? You do know nopony is allowed to use magic in a mixed game, right? If you cheat, then you’re outta here.” “Aren’t you presumptuous.” Discord didn’t take too kindly to Bab’s words as he looked down at her with a stoic look and half slitted eyes “I’ll have you know that I represent the honorable team known as ‘The Guild’, and I’d never stoop to something as low as cheating. But you’ve seen my body, are you going to tell me that I’m equipped to play the game properly when I don’t even have a way to properly grip the ball?” Babs just raises an eyebrow at Discord as she shows him the frog of her hoof “Hey genius, does it look like any of us ponies can grip the ball properly?” Discord actually stopped right there, as if he was beaten in a battle of words. He stumbled a little on what to say next as small beads of sweat came off his head. Really? How could he not see this coming? Ah god, the one thing you didn’t want to happen was being fucking disqualified for something as stupid as this. “Well...you see...Hmm..Ahh!” Discord finally comes up with a retort “Being a being of chaos, I happen to be right hoofed, but have two left limbs. So this new arm fixes that.” “Ok...But.” Babs points to his human arm “That’s on your left too” Discord coughs, and clears his throat as he quickly thinks of another lie “Erm..ahrm..hrm..Ahh, well, as I said, being of chaos. It would be rather chaotic for my right arm to be on my left side, right?” “...I guess?” Babs replies. You couldn’t believe it, she was actually buying it. “I mean, that kind of makes sense, in a non sensey kind of way.” Scootaloo adds “Exactly, now will you two step aside? I’m trying to bowl here.” Discord brushes them both away as he goes back to prepping for his turn. Christ, he had to make everything so damn difficult. Now he was going to cheat his way to a perfect fucking game. Now whatever glory there was to be had was thrown out the window. Though, that did make you wonder. Could you throw the perfect game? It would be cool to be the world record holder in Bowling. “Anon, the hero colt, rolled his perfect game on his very first try!” Yeah, that would be on your damned trophy. Ok then, that was definitely something to shoot for. Discord finally rolls his first ball and….oh god, it was worse than a gutter ball. He fucking threw the damn thing over the foul line in a backwards roll, causing it to roll back to him once it had reached halfway across the lane. Spike slaps his face with his clawed hand “Oh no…” Big Mac nearly moans in anguish. It was surprising really, but his competitive spirit must have really taken a nosedive after that massive failure. You? Oh god, considering he was your “Dad”, you felt utterly humiliated. “Good grief…” Discord could hear the CMC giggling, he looks back at them, rather confused “What? What’s so funny?” “HAHAHA! You didn’t even score! HEHEHE!” Sweetie Belle laughed, nearly falling off her seat. “Wait. WAIT! THAT COUNTED?!” Discord looks back at Spike, who was putting a dash on the first frame “THAT ACTUALLY COUNTED?!” He was utterly blown away by the fact his shitty roll counted. “Y-yeah...It does. What happened, Discord? You were messing around on purpose, right?” Spike had to ask him, he couldn’t believe that someone like Discord could foul something up that badly. “U-uh…” Discord was stunned. He was frozen there for a moment as he held the ball and looked at it. He could see his failure all over his face through the reflection on the ball. He couldn’t allow this, sure he fucked up the strike, but he had to at least make it look like it was just to be courteous to the CMC “O-of course! I merely didn’t want to cause too much of an imbalance in the score. Now then, watch this! The perfect roll!” Discord winds up this time, and gives it all he’s got. And you just watch, your ears drooping when you see the kind of throw he made. “Oh no…” Really, that was all you were able to say as the ball comes careening backwards towards the team couch and right into the center of your fucking face, knocking you backwards and behind the couch in a daze. You could hear everyone gather around as stars danced about in front of you. “Woah, that was one crazy throw” Scootaloo said in amazement. “Yeah, erm, do you think everything will be ok?” Applebloom asked, she sounded very worried about the situation. “I dunno, did you hear that noise? That was louder than brass hooves hitting a set of teeth.” Babs said, in as much amazement as Scootaloo sounded in. “Does that count? It didn’t even go over the lane that time, I think I deserve another throw.” Really Discord? Holy fuck… “Wait Discord, oh no... Is that?” Spike suddenly sounds super worried about...something. “It’s a crack?! How can there be a crack?! I didn’t think anything could break through something like that” Sweetie Belle sounded astonished about something...wait, a crack?! Oh no… “Eeyup, that’s a crack, but it shouldn’t...WHAT IN THE HAY?!” Even the usually calm Big Mac suddenly let out a horrified cry. Oh shit, were you dying? “OH NO! IT CRACKED IN TWO! NOOOOOOO!” Spike suddenly screamed in hysterical like fear. Suddenly, you started crying and moaning as you whined to yourself “T-this can’t be it...I still have too much to live for. I-I thought my head was invincible...Mngh..ngh. I didn’t even know it could...wait.” You slid your hooves along your face and realized you were fine. You hopped up from the backside of the team couch to take a look at what the fuck they were talking about. All of them were gathered around the emerald bowling ball, which was now split in two from colliding with your face. Spike kneeled over it, crying his eyes out as he held up a few of it’s shards. Are...you...fucking.. “WHAT?! THAT’S WHAT SPLIT IN TWO?! HOLY...GUYS! I THOUGHT I WAS DYING OVER HERE! AND YET YOU’RE ALL GETTING WORKED UP OVER A BALL!? HELLO! IT HIT ME IN THE FACE! WHAT ABOUT ME?! FORGET THAT STUPID BALL!” Your words only seemed to make Spike cry more as he sobbed all over the broken halves of emerald. “Anon, why do you need to be so insensitive? We all knew you were alright. But the ball? Look at it! It snapped in two! Poor Spike spent many a bit getting this ball and even more for the customization. I think that was his entire life savings, all spent for us.” Discord says as he looks at you with a snooty frown. “I DID SPEND MY LIFE SAVINGS! ALL ONE HUNDRED BITS! GWAAAAAAAAH!” Spike fell over again, crying over the ball. “Erm, Spike, um. It’ll be ok. We can still use one of the balls in the alley to continue the game. And besides, that ball was made of a mighty big gemstone, right? You could at least eat it, I bet it tastes really good.” Applebloom says while patting his back, doing her best to cheer him up. “WAHH..wait.” Spike suddenly looks up and then at the cracked halves of the emerald ball. “That’s right, this was one of the biggest emeralds I’ve ever seen in my life. And I kinda secretly had been wanting to nibble it since I found it...erm, but is it really worth the hundred bits?....umm…” Spike hesitantly takes one of the halves of the ball and bites down on it. Suddenly he starts salivating and drooling as he mercilessly munches down on the emerald's half. “Ooo-oo-ohhh, yeah...I-It’s totally worth it.” “Well, that solves that problem, but that’s still a big zero for ‘The Tavern’ or whatever you called yourselves. Which means it’s my turn…” Babs grabs her team ball, throws it like it’s nothing, and immediately hits the strike “And now it’s your turn, Anon.” She doesn’t even say it with arrogance, she simply goes back to her seat and waits patiently. UGGGGGGGH! You couldn’t believe what just happened. You just find yourself slumping and sliding down back onto the couch with a miserable look on your face. You got outcared by a fucking ball, how does that even fucking happen?! Worst still, Discord’s big fucking zero meant your team was behind, big time. This game was a fucking nightmare.