//------------------------------// // 6. Gamer Pinkie // Story: Pinkie Pie takes Earth // by Goldstar //------------------------------// The next day on Thursday the 24th, once everyone arrived back home, Logan made an announcement. “Heather and Pinkie, I’m going out of town for the next few days,” Logan began, “I would have gotten one of my brothers to keep track of you Heather, but I feel Pinkie has earned my trust enough.” “Wait, what?! In just two days?” Heather protested. “A family emergency came up. You’re nearly eighteen Heather and you have Pinkie here, so you should be fine.” “But you’re leaving me with her!” “Yeah, your first real friend in a very long time.” “We got this sir!” Pinkie confirmed. “I babysat twins before and let me tell you, they were a hoof full and a half.” “I’m seventeen,” Heather reminded, rolling her eyes. “She’s in good hooves, I mean hands, with me.” “Okay, I’m getting prepared, and I’ll be heading out soon. Heather, here’s some extra money for things, like eating out. Holler if you need anymore, within reason.” “Yes dad, it’ll be fine. I’ll probably be home most of the time and still hardly talk to anyone in school.” “Just stay out of trouble, okay?” Logan headed upstairs. “Heather! We’re going to have so much fun, just us two! I mean, not discounting your dad, I would have thrown parties like I did last night if he was around too. But it’s just us girls bonding time together!” “And that’s the part I rather not deal with. Oh, snap! Luna is going to need taking care of. I never fed her before. Dad always handled that.” “I won’t let her stave. I’m sure it’s easy to feed a puppy like her.” “Did you have any experience with pets before?” “Gummy, a small toothless alligator.” “That’s not anywhere close to a dog.” Shortly after, Logan came back downstairs. “I suspect Pinkie might know how to do this already, but I’ll show you both anyway. I’m mainly doing this for Heather. I’m going to go over how to take care of Luna, like how to feed her and tend to her needs while I’m gone. Who knows, this could be a real bonding moment.” “Not this again.” “Is this how you want to live the rest of your life, miserable? This is a social world, and some bad experiences need not define who you are.” “That’s easy to say when you haven’t had friends that betrayed you after close to a decade of friendship.” “Did you forget what happened with mom? Life happens. Think of how many people who would want to be your friend if you would just put forth an effort. But that also comes with being a lot more positive as a person. This attitude is going to repel people away.” “Good.” “I can’t in good faith let my daughter go through her entire life like this. You’re not going to be living with me forever. Mom probably isn’t going to take care of you. I won’t try to get you to sign up for social media accounts, but I also can’t stand to see you like this, stuck in a rut.” “You’re saying all of this in front of Pinkie.” “I know, it just happened, okay? Anyway, let’s get to the directions.” After about twenty minutes of showing the two ladies the steps for properly taking care of Luna, Logan headed back upstairs. “You know what Pinkie?” Heather asked, “There is something we can do to spend time together.” “Going out on the town? Bowling with your cousins? I know! Throwing parties out on the town while bowling with cousins!” “No, no, no! Although, actually, I’m really curious to see what really weird way you would go bowling, maybe later. How did you bowl with hooves? Sticky hooves... right, anyway. For now, I got something far better, video games! Remembered when I briefly mentioned the Switch to you a couple of days ago? Well, I think it’s high time I show you how to play. It’s only the greatest form of entertainment ever. You may have magic and stuff in Equestria, but do you have video games, aside from those simple arcade machines?” “Video games can be more fun than friends, or parties, or parties with friends?” “For me, absolutely. Now then, let’s deep dive into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It’s a racing game and spin off in the super popular Mario franchise. It’s the second highest grossing game franchise ever. Anyway, follow me.” Once in Heather’s room, she shown Pinkie the docked Switch, the game disk, and Switch Pro Controller. “So, to interact with games, you need a controller. Now this isn’t the standard Switch controller, those are Joy-Cons, but we’ll get into those another time. For now, this is what you’ll be using.” “Oohhh, that’s a lot of buttons.” “Well, I mean yeah, at first, but it’s not so bad. You have A, B, X, and Y as face buttons, four shoulder buttons, a D-Pad, plus and minus buttons that tend to be for menu stuff, two special functions like the home button, and these two sticks for finer control that can also be pressed down as buttons.” Heather looked to Pinkie to notice her eyes spinning. “Thankfully you won’t need all these buttons for the game.” She put the disk into the proper slot on the Switch and the game booted up moments later. From the main menu, Heather selected Single Player, Grand Prix mode, and 50cc engine speed. “So, this is the engine class, which affects speed. This is the slowest speed and thus the easiest because it’s harder to fall off course since you have more reaction time, and the AI seems easier. Okay, see all these characters? Yeah, it’s a lot, but who does it look like you want to play as?” “I like that girl with squad hair with a lot of eye shadow on the bottom left.” “I thought you would have gone with Peach or Wendy. That’s Inkling Girl. She, along with Inkling Boy, are crossover characters from Splatoon. Said crossovers also including Animal Crossing characters and a version of Link from The Legend of Zelda franchise. Am I losing you again?” She hands Pinkie the controller. “Anyway, once you pick Inkling Girl and her colors, you’ll then have vehicle options. The category can be karts, bikes, or ATVs. The next two options are wheels and a glider. There are stat differences, but just pick whatever you like for now. Use the D-Pad and press A to make your choices.” Once Pinkie did so, the cup selection came up. “Go with the first one, Mushroom Cup.” Some seconds later, the first race loaded up and did a fly over of Mario Kart Stadium. “Oh wow, I almost forgot to explain the race controls. Hold A to accelerate. You should never let go during a race.” The countdown began and Pinkie’s kart was shaking. When the race started proper, she ended up spinning out. “Oh, whoops. You shouldn’t hold the button during that time unless you can time it right, but that’s my fault. If you hold it around two seconds, you’ll get the starting boost. No matter, you can catch up.” Heather saw that Pinkie was looking at the controller to know where to hold A. “You’ll get used to the controller layout. You really don’t want to look at the controller since you’re not looking at the screen and that can lead to all kinds of mistakes. Okay, you’re picking up speed. Ah, can you hit the pause button? I mean, the plus button.” Pinkie did that. “Okay, turn Smart Steering on. It’ll be a big help for you as you get used to the controls and not needing to look at them anymore. Although this track is fairly simple, it’ll help you not fall off of later tracks. “Try to touch those item boxes, you’ll get something from them. Then you press either of the left shoulder buttons to use it.” Pinkie managed to pick up a spiny shell. “That’s the infamous blue shell. It’ll fly ahead of the track and hit whoever is in first place.” “It just hits who’s in first place?” “And anyone else around. I find it one of the most annoying items in the whole franchise. There’s some small mercy if you can get a Super Horn to get rid of it, but only if you manage to hold onto it considering other items can get rid of it. It’s basically punishing someone for daring to be in the lead. Although it does lead to very tense moments when someone in second place uses it in a one-on-one race.” Throughout the race, Pinkie managed to finish in third. “Yes!” Heather cheered. “Finally, something you’re not super amazing at! I mean... congrats on getting third place your very first time playing a video game.” “This is fun!” Pinkie shouted, “I don’t know how we would play these with hooves back home, but I’m such some super brainy pony like Twilight could figure it out.” “I told you video games are the greatest form of entertainment ever made.” During the next track, Water Park, Pinkie entered an underwater segment. “Am I going to drown? That wouldn’t be any fun.” “Not in Mario games. They can breathe underwater forever. No, real humans can’t do that. It’s rather confusing in the Mario games. In the 2D games Mario can breathe underwater, but not in 3D ones unless they’re a spinoff title like this one. Also, the Inklings would not be able to go underwater in their own games, but then they would have been unplayable on some tracks if they kept that trait in this game.” A bit after Pinkie finished the cup in third place, Logan knocked on the door. “Okay, I’m ready to leave. It looks like Pinkie is having fun playing that. See Heather? You can do this. Pinkie, make sure Heather gets to bed on time, at ten thirty. I know she’ll try to sneak in playing all night without me being home to watch her.” “Ah man,” Heather complained. “Take care now.” A few minutes after Logan left, Heather went downstairs. “He didn’t even cook us dinner before leaving. Ah well, guess we’re on our own.” “We could have a dinner party! Cupcakes, cakes, pies, sweet rolls...” “I mean actual food.” “Ahh.” “I’ll just order a pizza to our home. It’ll take some time. It’s not like a cartoon where it’ll arrive before you even finish your order. Meanwhile I’ll just watch you play more Mario Kart before the pizza gets here.” Heather managed to keep Pinkie and herself entertained for the rest of the night with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Pinkie ended up making a party out of the gaming session, which mostly involved sweets, balloons, and a lot of confetti. Heather seemed less annoyed by this. “I should introduce you to other games soon like Kirby Star Allies. We have two controllers thanks to the Joycons that come with the console so we can play Mario Kart together.” Tomorrow, after Pinkie and Heather got home, with Heather being first, she decided to show Pinkie something on her computer. “There’s some really cool stuff I want to show you. The Internet has such great things and awful things, but let’s just focus on the great things. There’s this video sharing site named YouTube where you can find absolutely loads of videos. For now, I want to direct you to something known as a speedrun. Basically, someone tries to beat the game as fast as possible. Here’s one of Super Mario 64.” Pinkie became fixated on the monitor. “It looks so blocky.” “Yeah, it’s a game twenty-six years old. The first generation of 3D gaming had really blocky graphics as they couldn’t put many details into the games at all without the old consoles being unable to handle them.” As the speedrun progressed, showing off extremely skilled platforming gameplay, there came the part in which Mario jumped through a floor to reach a door faster. “Here’s my favorite tactic in the speedrun.” Mario ran up the stairs a bit, turned around, and then jumped backwards into the steps several times till he went fast enough to bypass the door. “And then there’s the even better part of it.” Mario left the clock room to enter a room with a long stairway. “Now normally, you can’t go up these stairs without at least seventy stars, but watch as he goes so fast that he bypasses the part that’s supposed to send you back downstairs.” Mario performed that and ended up in the hole at top of the stairs. “That is a BLJ, or backwards long jump. Probably one of the most noteworthy tricks in all of speedrunning. In a nutshell, Mario has no speed limit when going backwards. Therefore, he can go fast enough to break the game’s physics.” “Physics are a mere suggestion to me.” Pinkie noted as she briefly walked up the wall and onto the ceiling before dropping back down onto her feet. “That shouldn’t surprise me. Imagine if you could move like Mario does. Maybe you don’t have to imagine. I figured you might like this because you seem to be the sort who would get a real kick out of this. Not that I mean that in a bad way, clearly other people like this and none of us could perform this in real life.” “That looks like so much fun!” Pinkie suddenly switched to a mock demeanor. “Are you challenging me?” “Less of a challenge and more of a curiosity. I could show you other speedruns, like for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, in which players do something called a wrong warp to teleport to the end game from the start. Well, that might not be as impressive looking to you since it’s just a warp as opposite to something crazy right on screen.” Later that night, as Heather was trying to sleep, she heard noises from outside. It sounded like the door was being hit repeatedly. “Pinkie, wake up! Someone is trying to break into the house!”