Games for Brothers and Sisters
Shining Armor, the undisputed team captain, yelled, “Timeout!” right as the opposing kicker was getting ready to launch the hoofball back into the field of play. The sound of his voice, though not the deepest or the loudest out there, made all of the colts turn their heads. With a flick of his chin, his teammates began rushing towards him.
“Hey, which timeout was that?” somepony from the other team called out.
“Second!” Shining yelled back. “We still got another.”
“Okay,” murmured the same pony.
Of his seven teammates, orange-coated Peanut was the first to get there. His thin, energetic legs managed to grind to a halt before kicking up too much turf. “So, what’s the plan?” he asked eagerly.
Shining Armor’s exhalation was drowned out by the sounds of more pairs of hooves joining Peanut’s, crowding up to form a semicircle around him. His own hooves were throbbing, but Shining prided himself in his toughness, letting that single exhale be his only sign of weariness. He looked around at his teammates. They all had their ears perked up and eyes looking directly at him. Good. His teammates most likely didn’t recognize the big play opportunity that this next kick was going to open up, but Shining Armor did. He dropped his head into the huddle and wasted no time explaining what was going down. He had done this a million times before. It didn’t faze him that most of these colts were way bigger than he was, as many as three years over playground age. Every time they picked teams, for the past however many years he played this game, Shining Armor was always picked captain.
“Okay guys,” he murmured. “Now Beeswax is Tumble Fig’s favorite target whenever he’s kicking from the sideline. Well, dumb on him, ‘cause if Beeswax is wuss enough to leap at his own shadow”—he laughed—“then we should get him good.”
His teammates laughed too. Another member of the opposing team cried, “Are you done yet, Shining?”
“I don’t know.” Shining yanked his head out of the huddle and tried to stretch his neck above his bigger teammates. “Were you counting to thirty Canterlot Copycats?”
“Uh…”
Shining sighed. Sometimes he had to be referee and captain. “Well then count to ten!”
“Okay!”
Shining Armor got back into the huddle. “Anyway, Peanut and Mousetrap, you two position yourselves there and there, and be ready as soon as he kicks: you need to double team the crud out of Beeswax. Trippy, Nail Bite, stand off a good couple meters down the boundary so Fig won’t think twice about going for the counterattack. Everypony else, just do your thing, but try to face Beeswax. The whole point of this is to force him to either break down or kick it back to Fig.” He raised his hoof and pointed to his right temple. “It’s all psychological.”
“Eight Canterlot Copycats.” The pony on the other team was now yelling out his counts. “Nine Canterlot Copycats…”
“Got it?” Shining Armor swept one last glance across his teammates, who were all nodding. “Okay, break!”
They bumped hooves and scattered, and Shining Armor watched his teammates do exactly as he told them. Mousetrap and Peanut shifted from their typical positions just slightly enough so that they were facing their new target. The big guys, Trippy and Nail Bite, imposed themselves on the sideline. Leak was crouched on the perimeter, String Bean was there supporting him, and of course Cabbage hung back as goalie “Looking good so far,” Shining Armor said to himself. All while this was happening, he scuttled across the pitch so that he was roughly the same distance from Fig, getting ready to kick, and Beeswax, who was staring nervously back at Fig.
Fig took a single step backwards. He didn’t move a muscle, but he stood there in a spring-loaded stance that made Shining Armor’s own legs twitch in anticipation. Shining Armor gritted his teeth. Every time that pony flinched even a little, Shining Armor’s body couldn’t help but reply with another flinch. Even though Shining was used to outsmarting other ponies, he still got jittery whenever he had to carry out a big play. His friends all knew this. They loved making him jump. But no matter what they did, Shining Armor was always ready.
Fig charged, swinging his hoof into the ball to send it arching high above everypony else. Shining glanced hurriedly at Mousetrap and Peanut who were now charging towards Beeswax. In that exact moment, the ball landed and rolled right into Beeswax’s hooves.
Shining Armor galloped straight ahead. He charged, but he also watched as Mousetrap and Peanut swarmed over their target. Beeswax, rearing in fright at his charging opponents, kicked the ball right back to Fig. But Shining Armor was right there to sweep the ball mid-pass into his own hooves, and he began a mad dash for the goal. His team had the advantage now. He was running downfield, only a few other ponies there to defend against him. He looked to his right and saw Peanut streaking off diagonally, a smart move to get open from the defenders that were already galloping towards Shining. Soon his mind began rattling off new plays at a dizzying pace. Mousetrap was starting to catch up too.
“Shining!”
He glanced at the opposite sideline and saw his baby sister leaping up and down for his attention. By this point, he was more surprised that he wasn’t expecting her. Twilight Sparkle would never stop trying to bug him for more than five minutes.
He was going to have to tell her off later, though. Shining Armor had to get this goal. As the defender ahead of him ran at him, he swiped the ball across to Peanut who, being chased to the sideline by one of the opponents catching up with him, was forced to pass down the middle to Mousetrap. Mousetrap, however, wasn’t paying attention, and another defender charging up the middle swiped it right out from under his muzzle. Shining Armor, noticing the blunder that was going to occur, had already started galloping towards him right before the interception.
“Can I play, Shining?” he heard Twilight yell.
Shining Armor’s hooves collided with the ball. In his urgency to get back possession, however, he sent the ball rocketing on a straight flight out of bounds. Shining Armor reeled his hooves in and growled at his loss of control. But then, as he watched where the ball was going, everything suddenly slowed down. In his current line of sight, with the fly ball at the center, he got his first clear look at Twilight. There she was, jumping up and down trying to catch his attention. Her lips were pursed as if she were waiting for somepony to take her to the bathroom rather than for her favorite brother to take time out of his day to play with her, once again showing off how obnoxiously needy she could be. And yet for all of her attention-grubbing, she looked so innocent. And fragile.
“Twilight!”
He reached out his hoof right as the ball slammed square into Twilight’s face. When it bounced feebly back onto the grass, every single aspect of that innocent filly’s face began to quiver. Her lips blubbered. Her nostrils flared. Her big, shiny purple eyes started to glisten.
A desperate look took ahold of Shining Armor. “No, please don’t—”
Twilight reared her head back, opened her mouth, and let loose an ear-splitting wail for the ages. The park where they were playing hoofball was the biggest in Canterlot. A long ways behind Twilight, there were some ponies eating sandwiches under a grove of trees. Shining saw them all snap their heads towards her as soon as Twilight started crying.
The other colts in the meantime were exchanging a mix of angry and uncomfortable gazes between Shining and Twilight. Shining Armor felt a cold wave of embarrassment bearing down on him. He ran over to Twilight immediately.
“Twilight, I’m so, so sorry,” he spoke as he crouched down in front of her. “I didn’t plan on kicking the ball this way. Are you alright?”
Twilight lowered her head to make eye contact him, but she didn’t stop screaming, so Shining Armor’s face got blasted by sticky, grape juice-scented toddler breath. Twilight’s face, on the other hand, was consumed with a dire-looking redness.
“Come on, Twily.” Shining’s heart was beating furiously as he made a quick glance over to his friends. “Can’t you stop crying?”
Shining Armor started petting his sister, not really sure of any quicker way to get her to stop. Whether it did any good or not, however, Twilight’s screaming lowered slowly but surely. She gave out one final breathy noise, and finally closed her mouth. The screams were replaced with sniffles.
“Okay,” Shining said, finally taking his hoof off her. “Is everything good now?”
“Will you play with me?”
He peeked over his shoulder again. The colts were all looking at him, curious and impatient. Then he looked back at his sister, tiny, red-faced, and still racked by that volatile quiver.
“I’m playing with my friends, Twily. Can’t this wait?”
Then her lips pursed up hard, ears flattened, and a new bout of screaming started as she began to open her mouth again. But then Shining pushed his hoof over her mouth.
“Are you serious, Twilight?” He was growling, but whispering. “You’re going to do this to me after I apologize?”
She slapped his hoof away from her and showed him the face of the angriest tomato in the world. “You hit me! You play with me, or I’ll scream!”
Shining Armor flew up on all fours and made sure to look down on her. He did not, under any circumstances, back down from any of his sister’s stupid threats. “No.”
Twilight let out her harshest screams, opening a mouth that seemed too big for her face. Shining Armor, determined not to give her any more of his valuable attention, turned around and trotted back to the sideline. “Okay guys!” he barked, using his magic to yank the hoofball to his side on his way. “I’ll be making the kick now. While we’re waiting for my sister to explode, we’re going to play like nothing’s happening, all right?”
He let the ball plummet at his hooves and promptly crouched into kicking position. Twilight’s petulant shrieking was making his legs tremble with aggression. He was careful not to immediately act upon it, however, while he tried to spot a good shot.
And that was when she ran right under his nose and kicked the ball out of his hooves. Shining Armor spun dramatically and cried out for his sister to give the ball back, but she just kept running and screaming and dribbling the ball downfield. He stormed off after her, and as soon as he was about to overtake her, she spiked the ball deep towards the goal post. Twilight was running over to pick it back up again, but Cabbage, who was still at the goal, got to it first.
Shining bit down on the end of Twilight’s tail, resulting in her slipping and crashing on her belly. But she quickly got back up again and started running in place. “Let me go, let me go!” she shrieked.
He whipped her body towards him and flung his foreleg around her stomach. “What the heck’s your problem, Twilight?” he yelled.
Twilight was reduced to useless kicking and screaming. While simultaneously trying to understand and endure Twilight’s unending noise, Shining Armor saw Cabbage dribbling the ball towards him. He mailed it to Shining with a soft pass, but Twilight managed stretch one of her kicks to knock the ball away from him again. Cabbage just stared at the ball as it tumbled halfway back to him.
Shining, despite his efforts to control himself, squeezed his grasp around his sister until he was sure her ribs were sore. “You brat! I should—”
Before he could spit out anything else, he noticed Cabbage trying his best to shift his eyes away from him and Twilight. Cabbage tried to make it subtle, but Shining could easily see the way his lips were pushed down and to the side, how his eyes looked eager to roll at Shining as soon as he wasn’t looking. He looked beyond Cabbage and saw several other ponies doing the same thing. About half of them were hanging their heads in a very unflattering manner, making the kind of face somepony would wear after saying something along the lines of here we go again. Twilight’s shrieks had grown even more violent, carrying all the way down the enormous hoofball pitch.
“Fine,” Shining muttered. “We’ll go home.”
Instantly, Twilight hushed. Shining Armor actually blinked at how suddenly that happened. Taking a deep breath, Shining eased his grip on his sister and let her land on her hooves. When they met eyes again, Shining’s heart thumped nervously when he saw her face glowing redder than a tomato, panting with a mousy-sounding wheeze, and her whole torso shaking. It wasn’t unusual for Twilight to scream until she was red in the face and panting, but she somehow looked more affected than usual. He immediately asked if she was okay and if her ribs felt broken, to which she whispered yes and no respectively. Finally able to breathe easy again, Shining put on his best smile, lowered his neck, and asked her extra nicely if she wanted to ride the pony. Twilight scrambled up onto his back, wrapped her forelegs around his neck, and made herself like his backpack, except lighter and hairier. With the filly secured on his back, he took a few steps into the midfield and told everypony that he was sorry about everything and that he was going to take his sister home.
“Why does this always gotta happen, man?” one of them whined.
“I’m sorry, okay? Look, I’ll come back as soon as I take care of my sister.”
The other ponies stared at him skeptically when he made that last statement. Shining Armor could feel himself shrinking inside. When they finally gave him a chorus of half-hearted okay’s, Shining Armor only gave them one loud see you later, wasting no time turning tail and starting the long walk home for both he and Twilight. The park was many, many blocks away from their house. It really made his hairs bristle thinking that she kept following him this far from home unsupervised. No, it didn’t always happen, as that one pony put it, but Twilight ruined their fun far too often, be it by screaming, threatening to scream, running onto the field while they played, or things like that. It absolutely boggled his mind how his mother couldn’t keep her from doing this!
“So what’re we gonna play, Shining?” Twilight asked while they were walking home.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re staying with Mom, and I’m going to go back to my friends.”
He winced at Twilight’s kick to his ribs (which, admittedly, he deserved after trying to crush hers). “No!” She screeched, pounding on his back like a locked door. “You have to play with me, because you hit me!”
Nothing Shining Armor did was too miniscule for Twilight to use as ammunition against him. She was most certainly going to tell their mom about the ball-to-the-face incident the instant they got home. Then she would tell her to make Shining Armor play with her as punishment. He thought about explaining to her why that would never happen, since, after attempting that argument over a thousand times, it had never ever worked on Mom. But Shining decided against trying that again. There’s just no point in arguing with your baby sister when she seriously thinks she’s smarter you. So Shining Armor did the smart thing and shut his mouth while Twilight kept banging on his back.
As soon as he opened his front door, no surprise, Twilight leaped off his back and yelled, “Mom! Shining—”
But then blue light burst out of Shining Armor’s unicorn horn, and a silver zipper appeared in the place of Twilight’s lips. “Mom!” he yelled. “Twilight sneaked out again and was bothering me and my friends, and then she got in the way and hurt herself.”
Twilight unzipped her lips and screamed, “He hit me in the face!”
Their mother walked up to them wearing the exact same expression that Shining’s friends were wearing. Unfortunately, this was her face for most hours of the day. He really hated how Twilight kept exasperating their mother like this. Worse still that it was making their mother exasperated at him as well.
She gave them the same little lecture that they always got whenever they got into a scrap. Shining Armor, you need to be careful around your sister; she’s much smaller than you, and you could really hurt her if you’re not careful. Twilight Sparkle, you need to respect your big brother’s privacy; he’s not a toy, he’s a pony. You can’t keep sneaking out of the house; I’d lose my mind if you got lost in Canterlot. And so on, and so on, and so on. The brunt of the lecture was aimed at Twilight, of course. Though judging by Twilight’s downward eyes and bratty scowl, she was hardly taking any of it to heart. When it was all done, she shot her big brother a dirty look and proceeded to stalk up to her bedroom.
“Mom, can’t you keep her on a leash or something?” Shining said.
To that she just groaned. “No more of that, Shining. I’m sorry, but nothing short of a cage is keeping Twilight in the house. She knows how to open doors with her magic, so unless we can suddenly afford to get new locks, she can come and go as she pleases. She just loves playing with you too much.”
Shining Armor groaned. Like he himself at her age, Twilight was showing better-than-average magical talent. She already learned how to control her telekinesis to unlock the doors at her leisure. “I keep telling you, Mom, there are a ton of skilled unicorns in Canterlot who’d be more than willing to enchant the locks for next-to-nothing.”
“Well, why don’t I just buy her the cage then?”
“It’s not that drastic, Mom.”
“Well, the way I see it, the only way you’re getting free of her is if you schedule some time to play with her.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard to keep her away from me, Mom.”
They argued for a little while, but it didn’t take long for Shining Armor to quit. It wasn’t possible to win an argument with his mom when she got stressed like she was right then. Her white-and-purple-streaked mane was frayed and frazzled, and her rattled pacing from stove to pantry to countertop and back to the stove made communicating an awkward task. She obviously had her hooves full cooking lunch, so Shining just told her that he’d be back in time to eat and left.
When he got back to the park, he found that his friends had abandoned the pitch and were now hanging out by the swings. Peanut, Mousetrap, and another pony named Funny Bone were the only ones left after the game.
“Hey guys,” he said as he trotted up to them. “So, uh…who won?”
“Not us, man,” said Peanut.
“Oh. Well…sorry, again.”
“What? You think we needed you to win?”
“Hey, that’s not what I—”
Peanut chuckled. “Naw, I’m kidding. We definitely got our butts kicked because of you.”
Shining Armor forced out a chuckle while the rest of his friends laughed at Peanut’s little ribbing. “Well,” Shining said, “I’m free of my sister for now.”
“It stinks that she’s such a brat, huh?” Mousetrap said.
“I know. I mean, I love her, don’t get me wrong, but…I don’t get why she always wants to bother me.”
“Doesn’t she got any friends to play with?”
Shining Armor shrugged “Not as far as I know. It’s always been where she goes to school, then comes home, plays with her dolls or whatever in her room, and whines to everypony about how bored she is.”
Shining Armor thought back on all the times she guilted him into playing with her when he really didn’t want to. She was so persistent, sitting in front his bedroom for long periods moaning pleeeeeease until his attempts at being cold burned out. Twilight was a brat, sure, but he’d be the first to admit that she was an adorable brat. That cute face of hers made her complicated clapping games somehow less tiresome. Her squeaky naiveté made their pretend games kind of interesting. But it wasn’t so much that he hated playing with her as it was that he hated how she was so used to getting her way. By the time it began to really grate on Shining Armor, Twilight had gotten into the mindset that she basically owned him.
“Why don’t you just find her some friends?” Funny Bone said.
“I find her friends?” Shining replied. “If she isn’t making friends at school, I don’t know what I could possibly do.”
“Geez, Shining, I don’t think it’s something you couldn’t handle,” said Peanut. “Funny.” He turned his head to Mousetrap and Funny Bone. “Weren’t we just talking about what Shining’s cutie mark might be a little while ago?”
The other two chuckled. “Yeah,” said Mousetrap, “who knows, man. Running, spelling, strategizing, studying, math, just straight-up solving ponies’ problems—Shining’s eligible for at least a hundred different cutie marks.”
Shining Armor grinned at his friends’ mostly-exaggerated praise of his talents, even though he knew that they were also making fun of him again. Just about everypony in his school recognized that Shining was heads-and-shoulders above all of them as far as smarts and athleticism went. And yet, despite all of that, he had no cutie mark. Sure he had more than a few years left of school, but his blank flank was the oldest in school by far. He tried not to let it bother him. He didn’t need a ridiculous mark to tell him he was talented. And yet there was always this bizarre feeling of misplacement between how he felt in his mind and how little he knew about the changes his body was going through as adulthood made its inevitable advance on him.
“Maybe I should just get a big letter A on my flank,” he said, forcing a chuckle. “You know, letting everypony know I’m top of the class in every class.”
“Aw yeah!” Peanut cheered. “Schooling ponies all day, every day!”
Schooling ponies. That actually was the greatest possible description of his talents, Shining Armor realized. It was so silly-sounding, and that was justified. He dominated, true, but it was all just to pad his little ego, and—no offense to his buddies—it was almost always against kids who had about as much drive as a slug. Schooling ponies. Straight A’s.
He liked being cocky and all, but even he had to admit that he was still very much a kid.
Though he might have been a gifted unicorn, when did he ever have to really give his all and use those gifts to his highest potential? The few true challenges he had in his life—he chose to endure them. Case in point, how he put up with Twilight Sparkle. What would happen, though, if he really tried to solve a problem that had nothing to do with school or a game? As he pondered it further, an entire lexicon of empowering, fulfilling words leaped to mind, and the resulting images flooded into his imagination like the warmest of warm showers. It wasn’t long before the gears in his young brain started spinning.
“Okay, guys,” Shining said, “I’ll get Twilight some friends.”
Peanut chuckled. “Always got somethin’ to prove…”
& &
Shining Armor didn’t feel too bad about skipping school that day. He went to enough classes and did well enough in them to the point where he thought one day off wasn’t really much. It wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter. Twilight’s recess went on during his classes, and that was the only way he could possibly see what school was really like for his little sister.
He had managed to wriggle his way up an oak tree before the kids at Ms. Willow Weave’s Preschool were let out for their forty-five minute recess. It was the perfect location, planted right on the edge of the playground’s property, just beyond the metal fence that kept the kids herded in. He had his father’s best binoculars levitated up to his eyes. Here, he could observe Twilight with little to no fear of discovery.
This was actually his second time spying on his sister like this. Doing it more than once would make his observations significantly more accurate, Shining knew. But this was going to have to be his last time too, since he didn’t want his school sending any nosy letters to his parents wondering why hasn’t been in class. And so far, just as it had been the other day, Twilight was sitting all by herself under a tree while all the other preschoolers were frolicking in the playground.
He zoomed the binoculars onto Twilight specifically. He didn’t get to see her face from this angle, unfortunately, but he could see what she was doing. She had a coloring book open in front of her. She was coloring a sunflower today, and doing what was looking to be a perfect job. She had used all the right colors for the stem and the seeds, and not a single bit of crayon went outside the lines. She was doing the same thing with the flower petals, shading it in slow, careful strokes with the yellow crayon pinched in her teeth. It was an obsession with perfection that brought back some rather unpleasant memories of her teaching him to play Ten Prancing Pegasi just the other day. Why fillies liked those ridiculous clapping games, he would never understand.
A pair of fillies squealed as they ran past the tree, and Twilight spun her head towards them. But she brought it back to the coloring book just as quickly when they were out of her presence. A little while later, a foamy yellow ball rolled up beside her. It nestled against her tail, and caused Twilight to glance back at it. Then a colt came up to her and, judging by how his lips moved, asked if he could have it back. Twilight, blankly making eye contact with him, told him she’d be happy to give it back, at which point her tail flicked it right to his hooves. He said thank you, she said you’re welcome, and the colt grabbed it up with his teeth and romped back the way he came. Likewise, Twilight pushed her nose back into her book the instant she was done talking.
“Sheesh, Twily,” Shining muttered. “You don’t care a single bit, do you?”
He switched his observations from Twilight to the greater mass of children in the playground. They weren’t much different from the last time he watched them. A bunch of snot-nosed, screechy, hyperactive ponies that barely knew how to talk. Ever since Twilight started school, she loved to tell him how she was the smartest filly in preschool. It was one of her favorite arguments, actually, for why she was right and Shining Armor was wrong. Regardless, he could definitely understand her perceiving herself as better than the other kids. Heck, Shining thought that way about himself too most of the time. But that didn’t stop him from getting to know other ponies.
He saw a little blue unicorn colt trotting from the sandbox with a full pail swinging from his teeth. He came behind a sweet little filly picking flower petals, who was somehow completely unaware of his presence. The colt dropped his pail, and a nervous glimmer shone in his eyes. But that was quickly replaced when he bent his head and strained to lift the pail with his own magic. He was shaking with effort, but he finally got it to hover over the filly’s unsuspecting head. He flipped it, and the filly screamed as she was dowsed from head to toe in sand. The colt was cheering and taunting while the filly was crying hysterically.
Shining Armor just sighed and shook his head. “Cute kids.”
As opposed to Twilight and her nonstop coloring, these kids were a very active bunch. Just like the other day, they tended to do different things in different groups. A couple ponies abused the slides the entire recess. A couple of others played hopscotch on the patio in front of the school house. And still others played with that strange yellow foam ball that Twilight rejected not too long ago. Seriously, what kind of ball was that anyway? It looked like the group of kids playing with it were trying to balance it or something. Shining Armor didn’t remember any game like that when he was younger.
It occurred to him that while he was watching these kids play, he never once thought about why they were playing like they were. Like the kids on the slide. Were they all equally obsessed with sliding, or was it some kind of competition Shining had never heard of? And that foam ball game. How did that work? He set his binoculars back on those kids. There was a group of six of them, with one of them balancing the ball on his nose trying to stand on one hoof while the five others were cheering for him. Then, all of a sudden, he saw the filly that had gotten sand poured on her enter the group. She said some words, and he popped the ball to her. Then the group of six began cheering for her when she started her own balancing act, involving her lying on her back and balancing the ball on the tip of her hind leg.
Shining Armor lowered the binoculars and levitated a pen and notebook in its place. He had only just begun scribbling down his observations, but he could already see a great idea to get Twilight her friends beginning to form.
& &
There was an obnoxious knocking coming from his bedroom door. “Shiiiniiiiing?”
Shining Armor looked up from his notebook, filled to the margin with all of his lines. She was right on cue. “What is it now, Twily?”
“I’m bored.”
He opened his door to find his sister looking up at him with that adorable pout she gave whenever she wanted attention.
“All right.” Shining Armor looked down at her. “What’cha wanna do?”
Soon enough, he found himself plopped down in the middle of Twilight’s bedroom. If it weren’t for the fact that he was in here so often, the sheer girlyness of it all should have had him running for the hills. The walls were painted a soft lavender color. There were pictures of flowers and kittens on the walls and shelves. There was even a little tea table in the corner for tea parties. Every time Shining was in here, he always marveled out how neat his sister kept it. It was nearly as clean as his own room, and Twilight had way more stuff than he did. Her multitude of stuffed animals sat in a perfect line running from the foot of her bed, along the wall a few feet, until ending at her little book shelf. Some of those animals, however, had been plucked out of the line and placed into four little tea chairs and Twilight’s bathroom step bench, arranged in a rectangle facing a chalkboard easel that was just Twilight’s size.
She tapped the board with her big teacher’s stick. “Okfay,” she said while the stick was still in her mouth. “Crass brgins.”
Shining Armor had his rear cushioned in one of Twilight’s bright pink bed pillows. Whenever he played school with her, he had this kind of unspoken tradition of asking “Ms. Sparkle” why he, the clearly best student, had to sit on the ground while the others got their own chairs. But Shining decided to put off his smart-aleck routine for today. He sat there and did his best to appear attentive to his little sister’s self-important gibberish. This part of his plan, after all, had as much to do with observing as it did with acting. And it was quite dangerous too, as Shining Armor was forced to sit in the front row while his sister swung around that heavy wooden stick each time she scribbled chalk with her magic.
She didn’t drop it until the lecture was finished, but thankfully she hadn’t taken out either of his eyes. The purple light that surrounded her little piece of chalk vanished and reappeared around a light stack of papers sitting on her tea table. “Okay, draw a perfect circle,” she commanded her class.
While he got his paper handed to him, Shining Armor couldn’t help but stare bemusedly at the trio of highly imperfect circles that Twilight had drawn on the board. Twilight had a pretty good grasp on levitation, but she had a long ways to go before she could actually draw with magic. Although, he had to wonder how many of those lines were scratches from Twilight’s repeated stick-tapping.
After she passed out the papers, Twilight proceeded to break the suspension of disbelief pretend games were supposed to have by drawing each circle for her stuffed animals with her own hoof wrapped around their cotton-filled limbs. Then she approached Shining Armor, as he was not yet drawing, but messing around with the paper and positioning his marker at various angles.
“Shining Armor,” she said in a haughty voice, “you aren’t doing your work!”
“Uh, yeah I am.”
“No, you’re not. Don’t back talk to the teacher!”
“Why not? I mean, my other classmates don’t do anything, and when they do, they need Teacher to do it for them.”
Twilight growled. “I do not do things for my students.”
“Whoa, timeout, Twily. I think you missed my point.”
“Why do you always timeout? That’s not fun!”
“Hey, I just got a question, is all.” He raised his hoof, trying to look coy. “Teachers answer questions, don’t they?”
“Ugh. Fine. What is it?”
“Why do you need me to play with you when you have all these toys?”
“Because you’re real! Duh!”
“So that makes me more fun, right?”
“Hmm.” Twilight looked at the ground and rubbed on her chin, as if this were something that needed serious consideration. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“So…wouldn’t it be more fun if we had more ponies?”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. Do you know anypony?”
“No.”
“Not even at school?”
“Why would they wanna play school? They go to school!”
Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t have to be school, Twilight,” he said. “What kinds of games do they like playing?”
“I don’t know. They’re stupid.”
“You ever played them?”
“No, ‘cause they’re stupid!”
Stupid told Shining Armor absolutely nothing. If half of what his sister called stupid was actually that, then he doubted that Equestria would have been able to function well for this long. But Shining Armor wasn’t going to try explaining that to her again. Nope. He had been planning this dialogue all day, and so far things were going too well for him deviate even a little bit.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
“Huh?”
“I mean…” He paused for added suspense. “Why do you think smart ponies like you and I exist, Twilight?”
“Uh…”
“To help all the not-so-smart ponies.”
“But—but they’re—”
“Let me tell you something, Twily. One of the best things about having friends is that, when you have lots of friends, you get to learn new things all the time. And the friends of mine I value the most have taught me a whole lot of things. So, with that in mind, I think there’d be a lot of disappointed ponies if you didn’t at least try.”
“Try what?”
“Teach them how to play, of course. That’s not too much for you.” At that moment, Shining Armor lifted up his piece of paper, proudly showing off the perfect circle he had drawn while he was talking. “You think I’d have made this if you weren’t here, Ms. Sparkle?”
Twilight looked a little bit shocked as she was forced to observe her brother’s impeccable work. “But,” she said, “they’re stupid!”
“Play a game they can understand.”
“But it’d be stupid!”
Shining Armor sighed. It was as if she were a doll with prerecorded lines or something. “Twilight, the only kind of game that’s stupid is one that nopony likes to play. The smartest game, on the other hand, can be enjoyed by literally everypony. Do you know any games like that?”
“Um…Tea Party?”
“Boring.”
“Hide and Seek?”
“Everypony’s tired of that game.”
“House?”
“Always starts arguments.”
“School?”
“But you just said—”
“I don’t know, okay?”
“Well…hmm.” At this point, he manufactured a puzzled expression, complete with a wayward gaze and a hoof beneath his chin. “Hmm…we don’t know a good game…so, hmm.” He closed his eyes dramatically and started rubbing. “Maybe…we could…”
Shining Armor spared a quick glance at Twilight. Her head was tilted sideways. She looked absolutely lost.
“I mean,” Shining went on, “nopony else has thought up of a really good game yet.” He could hardly believe how patronizing he sounded. “Seriously! Nopony ever wanted to make a good game?”
Shining Armor paused to let his sister, hopefully, understand what he was trying to get her to understand.
“Uh…are you saying we should make a game?”
Shining Armor gasped. “Great idea, Twily!” he gushed, now making himself grin as if she had made the greatest discovery of all time. “We can make the greatest game ever, and make all the ponies in your class better for it.
Twilight didn’t say anything at first. She stared at her hooves for a little while, making various hmm sounds while Shining Armor tried to keep up his super-supportive smile.
“Come on, Twily.” Despite his best effort, a little bit of desperation seeped into his voice. “I promise we’ll make it super fun.”
She looked up at him. For a moment, her face was blank and unreadable, and Shining’s stupid grin threatened to crumble out of that blasted jittery anticipation. Then, instantaneously, a chirpy smile popped onto her lips. “Okay!”
“Great!” Shining Armor got off the pillow and leaped towards the chalkboard, levitating a piece of chalk towards him. But then he heard his sister growling behind him, and he dropped the chalk.
“Okay, Twily,” he said calmly. “What do you want this game to be about?”
She ran past him, magically whisked up the chalk he dropped, and proceeded to scribble all over the board. Through her crude drawings and her scatter-brained explanations, Shining tried his best to understand what exactly she had in mind for their awesome new game. As Twilight went on and on about stuff that sounded like rules, it became clear to him that she was going to need his help a lot if she wanted to get kids to play with her. So, hopefully, she would share some of that chalk.
& &
It was a long afternoon trying to perfect the game. Even though Twilight did share the chalk, albeit with a lot of huffiness involved, Shining Armor’s patience had been thoroughly tested during the whole thing. There was a lot of disagreement. A lot of disagreement, and that can’t be emphasized enough. But Shining Armor held on. Without a single shouting match, the two of them finally reached enough common ground to create a finished product. Shining Armor wrote down all the rules they agreed on and handed them to Twilight.
“All right. Now when you explain the game to them, do it politely. Don’t call them stupid or anything like that if they don’t get it immediately. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Twilight said this, however, with her back turned. She was in the middle of making her Mrs. Smarty Pants draw that perfect circle.
Shining glared at her backside. “I’m serious, Twily,” he said a little more sternly. He sure as heck didn’t trust her when she had her back to him. “We worked pretty hard on this game, and I want other ponies to like it too.”
Twilight kept at her play, flopping her doll’s limbs around as if Mrs. Smarty Pants’ grade were more important than their game.
“So will you do it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Shining Armor couldn’t escape it. Her tone, her posture—it screamed defiance, and it made his insides boil. “Are you even listening to me, Twilight?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’ll do it, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it!” she turned and yelled back at him.
“Promise?”
“Yeah!”
“Really?”
Twilight pounded her hooves on the floor. “Yeah! I promise, okay?”
“Okay. You promised.” He began to turn away from her, but, at the last second, he tossed his head behind him one more time. “You gotta keep it, Twily.”
Twilight only had one response left for him at that point—she stood her ground and gave him one of her nastiest looks. No words. No assurances.
After that, Shining Armor was quick to slide out of his sister’s bedroom, closing the door behind him with full intention of separating himself from her completely. He collapsed against the door and sighed as if it were his first real breath of air in days. He had come dangerously close to completely snapping at his sister. Sweet Celestia, there was just something about her body language that made him want to kick puppies! He grabbed his forehead and shook it in disbelief. It probably would have better if he just took his sister’s first uh-huh at face value, and didn’t try to overbear her like he did. All he could do now was hope he didn’t irritate her too badly.
As he crossed the hall back to his own room, he felt the same jitters he felt whenever there was a kick waiting to be made at the park. Just like in hoofball, he had made a play that, while clever in some ways, wasn’t necessarily guaranteed to work. Getting Twilight friends by making her play with them? A little voice in his head was shouting stupid, stupid, stupid! while he sprawled out on his bed sheets. It was true that his “big plan” didn’t quite live up to his ego’s expectations, but he had to follow through with it. He could doubt all he wanted, but there was no way in a frozen summer that Shining Armor was going to accept defeat from his baby sister.
The next day, he thoroughly wrapped himself in his usual activities. Acing his math test, getting best time on the PE laps, kicking butt on the pitch with his friends after classes…that whole “schooling ponies” routine that Peanut had so-fittingly termed. At least his sister didn’t harass them that day, which Shining took as a good sign. When he got home, as tired as he was, the question of how Twilight did burnt more fiercely than ever. He went up to her bedroom door and knocked first thing.
The door promptly cracked inward, and Twilight stuck her little head out. “Yeah?”
“So, how did it go?”
Twilight didn’t respond for a while. She moved her lips once, but then shut them. Shining Armor raised an eyebrow at that, but then she finally said, “Okay, I guess.”
“Okay?” Shining said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means okay, stupid!”
“I mean what happened?”
“G—Get out of my room!”
“I’m not even in your—” he groaned. “Did you get them to play the game?”
“Uh.” She looked down, shamefaced. “No.”
“Did you explain it the way I told you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t feel like it!”
“Well, when will you feel like it?”
She slammed the door right in his face. Shining reached for the doorknob, but he heard the lock clack before he could touch it. He started pounding on the door. “Twilight, I worked hard on that game too, you know. You promised me you’d do it, Twily, remember? What do you gotta say to that, huh?”
He kept pounding, but Twilight never responded. Finally, he dropped his hoof and sighed. After letting some silence linger, he looked at the door and determined to let his sister know he wasn’t a quitter. “Fine then,” he said in a raised voice. “Promises get broken all the time, after all. I’ve been through it before, plenty of times. If you can live with that, hey, I can’t change who you are. I mean, if you’re okay with being a promise-breaker then who am I to—”
“I’ll do it, okay?”
“You will?”
“Yeah!”
“Soon?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay, Twily. I’m counting on you.”
By the time he was back in his room, though, he realized what a horrible lie that statement was. This whole plan relied too much on him trusting his sister to actually listen to him. Of course, whatever plan he had for her was going to involve her having to listen to him, but he thought for sure that making it about a game would have made her more eager to do just that. She had proved him wrong.
He wasn’t going to give up, though. It was really starting to look vain, by all means, but he’d have been a hypocrite with all his talk about living up to his potential if he didn’t keep bugging Twilight. So on the next day, Tuesday, he climbed up to Twilight’s door and knocked again. She opened up, he interrogated, and she still hadn’t done it. Then she tried to cajole him into playing one of her ridiculous clapping games with her, at which point he just walked away. Wednesday came, and Twilight still hadn’t felt like playing the game with her classmates. Shining Armor tried to explain his frustration at her unwillingness to live up to her word in as gentle a way as possible, while putting a little extra emphasis on “broken promise,” to get her feeling guilty. She promptly told him to shut up and slammed the door on him.
It didn’t matter when Thursday rolled around. He quit. He was done. He was so done with trying to reason with his brat of a sister that he didn’t really give a care if he had to appease her every now and then. Instead of going to Twilight’s room, he went into his own, curled his legs around his pillow, and dwelled on what could have been but never could be.
For that reason, Shining Armor spent even more time away from home than usual on Friday. He played two games of hoofball with his friends, hung out with them for several hours afterwards, and very nearly broke his 10:30 curfew. He ran through the front door and saw his mother rise off the floor first thing. She looked at him crossly.
“Shining Armor,” she said, “where in the world were you out this late?”
He was still panting after galloping home all the way from the park. “Gee, Mom, I got home before curfew, didn’t I?”
“But you never cut it this close. Goodness! I thought something happened to you.”
Shining Armor just stood there in stunned silence. His mother dropped down on her haunches, head hanging in a way that made her seem far older than she actually was. Something was off about her tonight. Sure, she always had more than a few loose hairs, but it was too late at night for Twilight to be acting up.
“Is everything all right, Mom?”
She sighed. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’ve been going all over Canterlot looking at different preschools. I meant to do it yesterday, but then I had to go shopping and then walk Twilight home with the groceries and—”
“New preschools? Why would you be doing that?”
“To get Twilight out of the one she’s in right now, that’s why!”
“But…why?”
“Well, only because that school has done absolutely nothing for Twilight. How many months has she been there, and how many friends does she have? None. And then some kids go and dump sand on her! Can you believe that?”
“They did what? When the heck did that happen?”
“Tuesday. She told me all about it when I brought her home that day.”
But Twilight didn’t tell him. That wasn’t unusual, but he didn’t understand. Then it finally occurred to him what this could mean, and he bolted for Twilight’s bedroom.
“Shining, you’ll wake your sister if you run that loudly!”
When he opened her bedroom door, he found her lying on her back, wide awake with all her lights on. Despite it being way past her bedtime, she was playing with her stuffed elephant, juggling it with her hind legs. When she saw him, however, she let it drop. “What is it?” she whined.
Shining Armor closed the door behind him and approached her. “Twilight.” He stopped in his tracks, however. He was just about ready to bombard his sister once again with guilt-speech and lecturing. But if what he suspected was true, he realized that he couldn’t do that and expect her to be honest with him. The only way he could do this, then, was to say something risky.
“I just wanted to say thank you.”
Twilight’s dreamy, play-addled look suddenly sharpened to focus in on him. She slowly lifted herself upright. “Thanks? For what?”
“For trying to explain our game to those kids on Tuesday. It means a lot to me.”
Twilight looked down from him. A grimace crossed her lips. “They were stupid. They didn’t get it. They throwed sand at me.”
“They did?” Shining Armor reared back slightly, trying his best to feign shock believably. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I promised I’d get them to play.”
At that moment, Shining Armor, as he looked as his sister, wasn’t sure what to think. Just from looking at her, how her body was held and how her expression was scrunched, he knew that she was very unhappy. But at what? At herself? At her classmates? At him? Regardless, he was certain now that it all went back to him talking her into that promise. And for the first time in Shining Armor’s life, he believed that his sister actually felt bad that she did something wrong. And the result was what he was seeing right then. So much negativity brewing in the face of something so little. Not the face of a petulant crybaby, but an expression of something more mature and, by association, more unsettling. To Shining, it was just ridiculously wrong. It felt wrong just to walk any closer to her. But the worst thing was knowing that this would never have happened if he hadn’t kept harassing her every day in the past week.
As much as Shining Armor burned to interrogate her, to understand how exactly she went about explaining the game, he knew it wouldn’t be worth it. Did she bungle it all up herself and started calling ponies names? It wouldn’t surprise him if she did. Did she actually do it right, but had sand dumped on her for no reason at all? He doubted it, but he couldn’t know for sure.
“Um…Twilight?” Shining Armor began awkwardly. “It’s fine, really.” He put on a big smile and chuckled merrily. “Who needs ‘em? The two of us can play it some other time. How ‘bout it?”
“No!”
His smile cracked for a moment, but he had in back in an instant. “Okay. Well, anything else then?”
“Ooh! Ooh! Let’s play Prancing Pegasi! Right now!”
“Whoa, I didn’t mean we should—”
Before he knew it, she had bounded from her bed and landed right at his hooves. She looked up at him with puppy eyes. “Please, Shining?”
It was a complete change in her demeanor in so sudden of an instant. But Shining Armor felt so much better now. He was used to thinking that Twilight’s sweet little faces like this were just artifice. But how could this be fake when her sadness before was so real? It was strange, magical even. And, as it always did, it yanked into yet another unplanned play date with his little sister.
“Alright,” he said, dropping onto the floor with his hooves held out. “But let’s keep quiet so Mom won’t think you’re staying up late.”
So they clapped their hooves and sang the stupid song like they always did. Several more times than Shining Armor was comfortable with, although, despite his boyish insecurities, he took a little private pride when Twilight only had to correct his hoof-motions half of the time. They ended up playing other games besides Ten Prancing Pegasi, inevitably, and he was only able to stop playing when their mother walked in. Usually, Shining Armor was exuberant when Mom saved him from his sister, but this time he felt different as he left Twilight’s bedroom that night. It was as if his relationship with her had somehow become more real than it already was. By the time he was lying down in his own bed, he had thoroughly pondered what it might have meant. In the night’s silence, he realized with a shudder that Twilight needed him as much as she needed a friend. He shuddered, yes, but it wasn’t out of fear, he realized. It was pure awe.
& &
It seemed that everypony, including Shining Armor himself, had high expectations for him. But you can’t meet high expectations without meeting high challenges. Ironically, even though Shining Armor had failed his latest challenge, it wasn’t more than a couple of days afterwards when he woke up with a cutie mark on his flank.
He was at a loss for words when he saw it for the first time, right in the middle of his rolling out of bed. There on his flank sat a six-pointed star, a soft lavender color, and supporting the star was a great, protective blue shield. While he was certainly excited that he finally had his mark, his confusion dulled his excitement somewhat. Most cutie marks, after all, were directly tied to a specific talent. But this thing—he had no clue at all which of his talents it could symbolize.
It just went to show him that a lot of things he thought he could understand, like his supposed talents, like his little sister, might be completely different from what he assumed them to be. In the case of his cutie mark, it wasn’t until Twilight got her own cutie mark that Shining Armor finally understood his.