//------------------------------// // Prompt #452-Picking Up The Gauntlet // Story: Ponywatching // by ThunderTempest //------------------------------// Rarity was not really a competitive pony by most ponies’ standards. Ambitious, yes. Daring, on occasion, but she simply wasn’t hard-wired for competition like her friends Applejack and Rainbow Dash were. Rarity was simply content with her place and abilities, and only really competed for attention in the fashion world. As such, while Applejack and Rainbow Dash furiously tried to one-up the other’s score at one of the various games in Ponyville’s arcade, Rarity simply sat back and sipped her horribly fattening (and utterly delicious) milkshake. “Oh my, I am going to regret having this later,” muttered the unicorn to herself, as Rainbow Dash finally passed Applejack’s score. She caught a glimpse of what Rainbow Dash’s final score, and blinked in confusion. Sure, it was a high score, but not that high. Having a younger sister had somewhat kept her up to date with who was winning at the arcade from time to time, as it was quite common that when the Crusaders weren’t out getting covered in tree sap, they could often be found at the arcade, cheerfully wasting a few hours. But evidently, some of Rarity’s thoughts had shown on her face, because the next thing that Rarity knew, she was being dragged up by Applejack, with the earth pony claiming to Rainbow that Rarity thought that she could beat their scores. That was ridiculous, but the glove had been cast. And Rarity, despite her general non-competetiveness, still liked the occasional challenge, the few and far between tests of mental acuity and wit and on the very, very rare occasion, physical prowess. And she hadn’t quite mastered the knack of turning a challenge down. Rarity slipped a bit into the machine’s coin slot, and positioned her hooves over the buttons. Behind her, she could hear Rainbow Dash and Applejack quietly snickering, clearly expecting her to fail. Well, she would show them. She ignored them, instead focusing all of her attention fowards at the game. As the music started up, and the game began, Rarity’s hooves began to tap on the buttons, and push on the joystick, directing her character on the screen through the game. She fell into a rhythm quickly, her hooves barely being directed, reacting on almost pure instinct, and the outside world ceased to exist for a while for the fashionista. Rainbow Dash and Applejack watched with open mouths as Rarity’s score climbed, surpassing theirs well before the game had ended. “Hey, RD?” “Yeah, AJ?” “Ah think we might have bitten off more than we can chew, here.” Rainbow took a look at Rarity’s score once more, rubbing her eyes in disbelief. “I think you might be right, AJ.” [Time] The words ‘The End’ flashed in front of Rarity’s eyes, and she shook herself out of her minor stupor, and glanced at her score. It was higher than Rainbow’s and Applejacks’ combined score, by a whole factor of ten. Blinking, she realised that the game was asking for her name for the leaderboard, and so she entered RAR, the first three letters of her name, as a record of her achievement. New overall high score. Then, she walked away from the game cabinet, and sat back down with the remnants of her milkshake, leaving Rainbow dash and Applejack to simply stare, dumbfounded, at the record of Rarity’s skill. As if on cue, practically every other game in the area began flashing their own list of high scores, and from Rainbow and Applejack could see, RAR was always within the top ten, but more commonly was within the top five. “Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash, “we bit off way more than we thought here.”