In the messiness of Rarity’s work room, they’d set up a little card table while Spike was napping on the couch. Sweetie Belle was out, they’d finished a lovely dinner, and Twilight had offered to wind the night down with cards and perhaps wine. Rarity liked the sound of both, though she was partial to the wine and brought it to the table with her.
The cards were human in nature, but pony in make—Twilight played with the cards she had made herself after returning, all of them based rather religiously on the human game she had found in their world. Magic, she called it, a game of magic of the human variety. Or at least, of the sort they imagined.
“You know, I wasn’t sure about all this card business at first, but you’ve taken to the human game,” Rarity said with a smile as she shuffled a deck with her magic.
Twilight mirrored her. “It’s an intriguing game. I like systems, I like games…”
“And, despite yourself, you love the aesthetics as much as I do,” Rarity finished. “Really, Twilight, I know what you read. You’d have the world think you are all business, a mare of science and highest thought, and yet more nights than not I find you buried deep in fiction. Fiction of the most fantastic sort, I might add,” she said as she slid the deck across the table to Twilight.
Twilight presented her own and cut Rarity’s before giving it back.
“A girl’s allowed to like knights and mages,” Twilight said. “Anyhow, I was more surprised how interested you got when I first started importing Magic across from the human world. I guess that was foolish on my part. You’ve always enjoyed sharing games with me.”
A dice was rolled and hands were drawn and settled. “And you were excited. Should I not be excited for my partner’s passions, hm? Swamp and go, dear.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow, played a white-blue land, and gestured.
Rarity drew, hummed, and laid out a swamp and a Gifted Aetherborn.
“Vampires?” Twilight asked. “Mono black, probably. I’m surprised.”
The turn went back. A plains and a Wall of Omens. She drew and extra card.
Rarity, for her part, had not forgotten the comment. “And why, Twilight dear, would you be surprised? By vampires?”
“More by mono-black. It’s a bit macabre, and I suppose I don’t think of that as being your aesthetic.” Blinking, Twilight quickly added, “Not that it’s a bad thing! Just not what I expect.”
Rarity let out a little hmmph but seemed to let it go. The attacks she made the next turn were purely business, and definitely not her poking Twilight for her presumptions. Twilight noted the deathtouch on her creature and let it through. No need losing assets so quickly for little gain.
“Blue and white is exactly what I expect from you, of course,” Rarity said. “Unlike you, I can exactly see what you’re about and expect it. You’re a clever mare, I know that. You like clever sorts of strategies. You like to manipulate the tempo of play.”
She dropped another vampire, and Twilight grimaced. With a cheerful hum, she swung again, and Twilight decided to take it. It was just two points.
Rarity was right of course. Twilight wasn’t blind to the obvious. She knew her proclivities rather well. The more complicated, the more moving parts—necessary or not—the more she loved to learn and operate the levers that made it all go.
“So why vampires? Or, I guess, why mono-black?”
“Why not?”
She played a Thoughtseize, and Twilight noticed she’d chosen an older printing, one with a strange faerie, and she pointed to it. “See, this card makes sense. We’ve talked before. I like to make decks based on effects I like, and you like to create an aesthetic that recalls an experience.”
Twilight tapped and laid down a Dovin’s Veto. She’d rather keep that Soulherder in hoof, thank you. She’d need it later.
“Blast. Also, interesting. We aren’t monolithic, dear.”
“But I think this time you are building along an aesthetic. But mono-black doesn’t seem to fit.”
Rarity smiled a bit sardonically over her cards. Twilight knew that look. It was the I’m-indulging-this-but-be-warned look, the one she gave right before she dropped something sent Twilight into a rush of confusion and speculation about whatever chaos she’d caused and—
“Well, Monoblack does fit me best, just as Bant fits you best, Twilight. I am rather monoblack.”
Twilight squinted at her and played her Soulherder at last.
“Nah.”
“I am too!” Rarity huffed. “And, for good measure, at the end of your turn I’d like to squash that card with Victim of Night.”
“And I’ll just scoop it back up into safety with Ephemerate. It’s on rebound, also,” Twilight said lightly. “So it’ll come back on my next turn. The spell, I mean. And the creature.”
“Delightful,” Rarity groused. “And if I read that correctly, you’ll no doubt use it to flicker that wall and draw a card… and make that herder of yours a bit bigger.”
“Now you’ve got it,” Twilight said with a grin. “And Bant, really? White, green, and blue? Order and community, perfection and knowledge, and… green? Nature and preserving the natural order?”
“Chesterhoof’s fence,” Rarity said. She reached out and booped Twilight’s nose. “Do you know it?”
“I… I’m not sure I do.”
Rarity gestured lazily with the hoof she’d reached out. “You know Chesterhoof, I’ve seen you reading him. The Mare Who Was Thursday? Anyhow, he has this bit about a fence. A stallion on a stroll comes across it on his walk and says, why is this here? But after a moment he decides that it is probably best that it is where it is. If somepony put it there, they probably had some good reason, and so the stallion leaves the fence alone and does not go beyond it.”
“And that’s me?” Twilight asked. “I’m no stallion, but I would like to think I’m more clever than that.”
“Oh, you are. It’s not about a lack of curiosity. It’s about how you respect that for all of your curiosity, burning as it I know it is, it does have limits. You respect the world you find as much as you wish to know it. And the ponies you find.”
“I… well, I’m also just as likely to, ah, mess with time.”
“Fair.”
“But anyhow, you’re definitely not mono black! You’re obviously mono red!”
Rarity stuck out her tongue. “Dear, love, darling, you’re joking. Surely you are joking.”
“You’re certainly not monoblack. It’s the color of ambition, sure, but also of using others for your own ends. It’s greed, self-interest, the will to power. You’re too nice for that!”
Rarity shook her head, finding another Gifted Aetherborn. Twilight considered her next move, and then slid a Deputy of Detention, snagging both of the Aethorborns underneath it in exile… and making her herder bigger. Satisfied, she swung in at a scowling Rarity and dropped a creature that healed her.
“I rather think it fits me nicely. Better than monored, the color of lightning bolts and rashness. I am ambitious, you know.” She bit her lip. “Decisions, decisions, decisions, ah! Perhaps we should…”
She killed the Herder, and Twilight sighed. “Yeah, figured.”
“Did you? Oh, good, good. For myself, I knew you’d have some sort of trick up your sleeve, but I had to see. And if you did, well, I had my ways. Anyway, I am ambitious. I’m a social climber, so they tell me. Black is also the color of the performer, you know. All eyes on moi!” She raised both her hooves and with a bit of magic summoned a ribbon from an open chest and made it dance before her. “An artist! A Lady! All of these things are ambitious, self-interested, and a bit greedy, hm? Monored. What am I, Rainbow Dash?”
Twilight played a Flickerwhisp and flickered the wall again. “Well, no, but the thought of a Rarity that was a bit athletic in some other world is fascinating. Perhaps a jewel miner… I’m kidding! I’m kidding! Don’t frown too much!” She laughed. “Red isn’t just about being a bit rash. It’s the color of emotion and freedom. It’s about chasing dreams and wild impulse! It’s about being dramatic!”
“My flair for the dramatic can be overstated.”
Twilight shifted in her chair and gestured with both forelegs wordlessly at the ornate fainting couch in the corner.
“Aha, yes, that does exist, doesn’t it?That’s simply my emotional support couch! It is a bit attention grabbing, I’ll agree… but it's all the rage in Canterlot!”
“I grew up there and I know that’s a lie.”
Rarity shrugged. “But doesn’t that make my argument better, hm?”
Twilight raised a hoof, blinked, lowered it. Then startled forward as Rarity began another turn, looking back and forth among her cards.
“I have it! But you’re the Element of Generosity! That’s not about ambition and all that. Even heroic characters that are black-aligned aren’t generous.”
Rarity inclined her head wordlessly, still looking at cards. At last, she smiled and answered. “My generosity often takes the form of sharing my skills… my expertise… I’ll grant you that it is generous, if you’ll grant we are not just our elements… but look at it constructively. It’s not that unlike the social climber, showing how useful she is to you and you and you, and you—”
She laid down a mountain, and Twilight leaned in. “What—”
“And that’ll be a Kholagan’s Command, dear. Discard a card and take two.”
“And that is getting cancelled,” Twilight said. “Or, uh. It would be if I had something.”
“Which you do not,” Rarity said with a bit too much smugness. “Also, I’d like to play a Gatekeeper of Malikir, kicked.”
“...And I sacrifice something. Oh, lovely,” Twilight groused, still surprised. “I’d been sure you were monocolored.”
“Ah, it is a mistake to get married to our assumptions.”
The game continued. The deputy was bolted, and Twilight found out the hard way that the red black deck Rarity had built was a tribal list with just enough interesting synergies with things dying on the battlefield to make Twilight’s attempts to control the tempo rather moot. Her cards were ripped from her hooves and her life total was pummeled.
At last, all but defeated, Twilight surveyed the army of vampires menacing her.
“So I’ve been thinking,” she began.
“A dangerous past time, but a good one,” Rarity said.
“I think you’re the less suitable person to call a social climber.”
Rarity set the desk aside and gestured for her to go on. But her smile was bright. She loved seeing Twilight’s mind at work on a problem. “Continue, please.”
“You’re not a social climber. Ambitious, sure. But what separates you from your hypothetical social climber offering her skills widely is that when you do so it is to make your art accessible. You want beauty to be something anypony can aspire to and for.” She drew a card, and held back a laugh as she went on. “You are the most generous pony I know. And its not out of ambition or a desire to be admired, but because you genuinely believe that art is worth sharing. And.. also, I’ve finally gotten to six lands, so I’d like to say that I have enough to pay the overload cost of Winds of Abandon, exiling all of these vampires and making my Soulherder a rather large threat. And as you have no cards in hand…”
She turned the Herder sideways and Rarity winced.
“I believe I have you at the end of a loving rapier, darling,” Twilight said.
“Ha! Like Tartarus you do, rascal,” Rarity said.
It was at this moment that a sleepy Spike peaked his head in. Neither mare noticed him until he cleared his throat. “Uh, I was gonna ask if you had any of those nice rubies, but I always saw you both as monogreen.”
Twilight and Rarity looked at each other, blinked, and with one voice said:
“Wait… what?”