It was a rather cloudy day in Ponyville. The weather pegasi had scheduled a storm for the evening and pretty much everypony decided to stay at home for the day. The streets were all empty, except for a certain cowmare, who was trotting towards the Books and Branches library, whistling, and with a puzzled look on her face. The librarian, her dear friend, had summoned her to "show her something", as she said. Eventually, she reached her target, and without thinking much about etiquette, she bucked the door open.
"Hey Twi! Ah'm here!" The yellow-maned pony yelled, just to hear somepony groaning behind the door. She had unintentionally slammed it on the poor librarian's assistant's face.
"Ugh... Twilight's upstair AJ.." The little dragon groaned, pulling himself off the door and shutting it. Applejack apologized with a chuckle, and headed to the stairs on the other side of the room. Twilight was there, trying to pull off a proud pose. Right behind her, a new desk, and on top of it, something Applejack recognized as a computer.
"Do you like it?" The librarian asked with a proud smile on her face.
"It's a Haydos Seven! Finest piece of technology in the town! - she continued - 8 Gigabytes of RAM, Weath hay7 processor at three point six gigahayz, magic-enduced cooling, two hard dis.."
"Woah, calm down sugarcube!" Applejack interrupted. "Y'now ah'm not into technowhatever stuff. Speak mah tongue." She said smiling.
Twilight groaned, kind of disappointed for not being able to properly express the almighty power of her new machine.
"It's a real powerful computer which can run a lot of stuff." She explained, rolling her eyes.
It was actually a cool piece of technology. The case was kinda big, blue with a shocking pink stripe in the middle. The monitor was really big too, about ten hooves, maybe a bit more, with a wallpaper that Applejack guessed was a galaxy. Over it, some icons like "Twilight", "Library", "Letters" and one that looked like a cube of dirt with grass upon it labeled "Ponecraft".
Anyways, regardless about how cool could that thing be, computers weren't actually a thing Applejack was interested into, and she tried to express that without hurting Twilight's feelings.
"Sugar, it's cool and everything - she started - but.. As ah said, computers are really not mah thing. Ah'm more into bucking and.." Twilight exploded into a laugh.
"Well we can buck if you want to!" She teased, continuing to laugh - causing Applejack to blush furiously.
"What? Wait no, i mean.. Ehm, that's not what ah meant!" She excused.
When Twilight had finally recovered she explained she had invited her by to make her try a game with her new computer, since with the upcoming storm AJ wasn't going to buck - And here Twilight chuckled histerically - much anyway. Given AJ a seat, she ran a game called Ponecraft. They than went on singleplayer and created a new world, which took Applejack a good five minutes to name as "Sweet Apple Acres" (She wasn't the fastest computer typer around, that's for sure) , much to Twilight boredom.
Finally the game started, and a world made of blocks came into view.
"Now that's what ah call Haigh definition." Ironized AJ, causing Twilight to snort and babble something about graphics not being the game's point.
"Well, whatever. Why the dude there has the same colors o' Dash?" Applejack asked, starting to move around.
"That's not important!" Twilight exclaimed, rapidly pressing F5 twice and hiding her blushing. "Here, play first person, it's better. Now go buck - And she chuckled again - some trees for wood."
Applejack shot her a "Are you kidding?" look, before walking to the closest three and pressing on a block in the middle of the trunk. After a few seconds the block broke, leaving the rest of the tree floating mid-air and Applejack with a dumb look on her face.
"Now if trees worked that way ah'd have to find mahself an other job." She commented, blinking twice, and resuming her lumbergathering work.
"So, is this game about bucking down trees or do ah have to do something else?" Applejack asked, as her wood blocks counter was reaching 40.
"Well, of course not. It's a survival game. Gather resources, craft stuff, get powerful weapons and armor, build a house.." Twilight explained.
"Ah think ah got it. How do ah'now crafting recipes and stuff?" Asked the cowmare.
"Well, i got a mod for that. Press E, than O, and you'll turn on NotEnoughHaytems. Now hover an item and press R, and it will tell you the recipe." Twilight explained, as Applejack followed her step by step.
"Alright. Anything else sugarcube?" AJ asked, not noticing the librarian blushing at the "Sugarcube".
"What's wrong with me today?" Twilight thought, explaining the tool system to the cowmare: Wood tools sucked big time, stone ones were meh, iron was good, gold tools were weak but fast, and diamond was the best. She then left the cowmare by herself and went downstairs to check on Spike.
Later..
"Woah" Applejack thought. "Time sure flies when ya're havin' fun."
She leaned back on her chair and looked at the monitor, chuckling a bit when a notification stating "Vapor: Luna is playing Moon Breakers." on the bottom left of the desktop.
She had been playing for over an hour now, carefully hiding in holes on the ground during the night and harvesting as much resources as she could during the day. She had met a few spider enemies and some black tall ones, which reminded her of the Slenderpony, a scare she used to tell Apple bloom when she didn't want to go sleep. By now, she had a pretty full inventory. About a hundred blocks of raw iron, an iron pickaxe, an iron sword, some gold, and a good amount of lumber, coal, and stone.
She was unsure if she should build a house and deposit her riches now or wait an other night and gather something more. After some thinking, she picked the latter. After all those spiders were weak, and with her rocking iron forehooves-plate and luxury-mode golden helmet, what could go wrong?
She stretched her hooves and leaned back in place. Carefully digging outside her hiding place for the night, she found the early lights of dawn welcoming her. Ignoring the gruesome show of black tall ponies and skeleton ponies burning to ashes, she set off for the closest cave, carefully placing torches during her descend. Finally, she met a dead end.
Unsure about to do, unbeknownst to her, she broke the first rule of that game: She dug down.
Fortunately, it ended all to well, as she broke the roof of something which looked like a mine, landing close to an object which looked like a chest. Out of curiosity, she opened it, to find inside some gold, an iron pickaxe, some pumpkin seeds, and... A couple of diamonds!
"TWI! Ah found diamonds!" She shouted with an excited tone.
"Great! Keep it up!" Was the response from the librarian, who was probably busy reading something to properly assimilate the info. Eventually, AJ decided to celebrate the event breaking random blocks around her. Turns out she broke one which held up a gravel structure, as a wall of the gravity-aware blocks fell down, revealing a cave behind. Inside it, not one, not two, but THREE deposit of diamonds!
With a smile widening on her face, she collected the precious booty and decided it was enough for now.
"Ah reckon ah should head back on the surface and build a safe place to deposit them babies." She thought. Following the mine, she eventually came to a cave which headed up. She started climbing up, when something caught her attention.
"Well hi there little guy!" She thought, looking at a green thing that looked up to her from a hole in the ground he was trapped in. She picked her sword, but didn't strike: The dude didn't seem quite as evil as the other three monsters she had met until now, and seing him looking up at her with puppy eyes from a bloody hole stimulated a bit her pity. Finally, she resolved to ask Twilight.
"Hey Twi!" She shouted. "There's some asparagus dude looking up at me from a hole! What do ah do? Is him evil or sumthing?" She asked.
"No!" The librarian shouted back. Applejack could bet she heard her chuckling. "It's a hay hugger! He just wants a hug! Hug him and there's a slight chance he drops diamonds, otherwise he drops hay!" Twilight explained, trying to hide her chuckling.
Applejack looked back at the screen. The living asparagus was still looking at her with pleading eyes.
"Twilight there's a lil' something funny about thiss hugger stuff. Ya sure you're right?" Applejack asked, with a hint of suspicion.
"Yeah, one hundred percent sure! It's fine, really!" She answered.
Applejack looked straight in the dude's eyes. It didn't actually look harmful. She decided to trust her friend, and jumped in the hole with him.
"Twi, if he glows does it mean ah got 'em diamon.."
BOOM.
Applejack looked dumbly at the "Respawn" button. Than blinked. Than blinked again.
...
......
.........
"TWILAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHT!"