//------------------------------//
// A Stickie Situation 
// Story: The Dynamo Effect 
// by ErraticOverlord 
//------------------------------//


Pinkie Pie erupts from the room, eyes filled with heavenly fire and a salmon fervently clutched in her mouth. She raises a hoof, glaring, and points at me, saying, "Nopony beats me at this game. Nopony."

But before I talk about that, I should probably fill you in on what happened before.

My name is Bon Bon. I'm an earth pony mare with a cream colored coat and a blue and pink mane. My technical occupation is running my own candy shop, making various sweets and the like for anypony with an inclination toward it. It's a good job and I'm the only one who sells sweets besides apples in Ponyville, so I've got no competition.

But you don't want to hear about me. You want to hear what happened before what's happening right now. Right?

Well, it started when I was very young and I heard of a game called Dynamo. The name conveys strength and the willingness to never give up, persistence. Technically, that's what the game requires, besides strong lungs. You see, the point of Dynamo is that many small, spherical, fruit candies named Stickies are spread out on a game board. The point of the game is to inhale enough Stickies while making your way to the other side of the board and inhale your opponents red colored Stickies - known as 'Heart Pieces'. The trick of the game is to do this while your hooves are tied behind your back, you have a blindfold on, and you need to inhale the Stickies covering the three 'Choice' spaces on the board. I say board, but Dynamo is actually played on a shuffled deck of cards, spread out into a four by thirteen grid. The Choice cards are the Sword, Shield, and Knight, or Ace, Ten, and Jack, respectively.

Because you're blindfolded, you don't know what you're uncovering so you just need to inhale as many Stickies as you can, until you win. It's a silly game colts and fillies played on a dare, that's all.

At least, at first. Actually, I started playing Dynamo rather late into it becoming popular. I was on the playground one recess, when I saw a bunch of ponies gathered around the slide. I trotted over there to see my first Dynamo game. I don't remember who was playing, and I don't remember who won, but I do remember the game. It amazed me. After seeing that, I tried it and found myself quite good. It was pretty fun to play with friends and I thought that was all it was going to be.

I was wrong.

It was when I moved to Ponyville and started my own candy store that I got a request for something I hadn't heard in quite a long time and from an unlikely character.

I was taking the candies I made out of the freezer when a rainbow maned pegasus with a cyan coat trotted in. She leaned over the counter and introduced herself, shaking my hoof. "Finally, a candy maker moved in to this town. I'm Rainbow Dash, nice to meetcha. So, you got any Stickies?"

I think I shook her hoof for several minutes, just processing what she'd said.

I thought, candy maker equals good. Rainbow Dash. Stickies. Got it.

But, why on earth would a grown mare want Stickies? Unless she played Dynamo.

Eventually, she coughed and I disengaged our hooves. "Stickies? I can certainly try making them. Any particular reason you want them?"

She grins. "Actually, yeah. There's a place around here where I play a game called Dynamo. Before now, we kept having to import our Stickies from Cloudsdale, which I'll be honest gets pretty expensive."

So that's it: a grown mare playing Dynamo. But not just that, there needs to be more than that to play and she said 'we'.

I ask her to write down her name and place I can contact her while I make the candies. I may have sounded unsure, but Stickies really aren't that hard to make. I actually remember tearing some apart so I could get a look inside, when I was younger.

When the Stickies were finished and cooled, I decided to personally deliver them to the address Rainbow Dash gave me. Why not? It had been a while since I've seen somepony play Dynamo.

I reached the address only to find it was a bakery called Sugarcube Corner. I trode inside, bag of Stickies tucked safely inside my saddlebag, and I asked the tall orange coated pony minding the counter where the Dynamo game was. He pointed toward a trapdoor, leading down to what I can only guess was the cellar.

I opened the trapdoor, warily. From what I knew, some random pony introduced themselves, made a special order so she could play Dynamo, and then lured me into an underground cellar. Whatever I did, I didn't think I'd be staying very long.

What I saw when I got down, though, was completely the opposite of what I expected. Instead of a dark basement room cluttered with junk, it was actually well lit and maintained. The Dynamo board was set up on an elevated table and the extra blindfolds and hoof ties were hung up on pegs in the corner.

Rainbow Dash was actually playing with somepony I knew from college. Her name was Vinyl Scratch, she had a white coat with a blue and white spiked mane. Vinyl was losing, badly. Rainbow Dash had two Choice cards and almost all of Vinyl's Heart Pieces.

The blindfolds and ties ponies I knew used when I was younger were basically anything we could find. I think I used a towel for my blindfold and a bit of rope I found lying around the house for my tie. But Rainbow and Vinyl had soft cloth of some kind with special designs and color coordination. They were clearly made just to play Dynamo.

Rainbow Dash uncovered her last Choice card to a cheer from the assembled ponies watching. Then finally, Vinyl's last three Heart Pieces.

It was only after Rainbow Dash won and there were general congratulations all around that anypony even noticed I was there.

Vinyl saw me and came up to say hi, which in Vinyl's case means a hoofbump. "Hey, Bon Bon, haven't seen you in forever. What brings you to Ponyville?"

I executed the hoofbump as best I could, though that's not very well at all. "Actually, I moved in just the other day. I opened my candy shop and Rainbow Dash, here, made an order for Stickies. You play Dynamo?"

Vinyl shrugs. "Keeps me busy. So you're our new Sticky supplier? Cool. You wanna try a game?"

Why not? I thought to myself. I've got nothing to lose. "Sure. Who should I play against?"

"Ooh, ooh. Me. Pick me." I saw a pink hoof raise itself in the air and almost immediately I was seated across from her. The card deck to make the Dynamo board was being shuffled and rather than get the Stickies I brought, they got some more of the ones from Cloudsdale.

The pink mare I was playing against introduced herself as 'Pinkie Pie' and I might have recognized her from the party she threw me when I first came into town, if I could remember what happened at it.

In any case, Pinkie had a pony I didn't recognize tie her blue and pink striped blindfold on and her yellow tie as well. I took a spare white blindfold and tie for myself, which Vinyl tied on. I heard the deck being dealt out and then the Stickies being placed on the board. It was at that point I noticed something about the Stickies: these Cloudsdale Stickies were colored and flavored using Spectra, same as my own Stickies, but something that always bothered me about using Spectra was the distinct smell it gave what you put it on. I never liked using it because after a bit I grew very tired of the smell and I certainly didn't like using it in great amounts or for great lengths of time.

But it occurred to me that I knew what each color of Spectra smelled like. So if I got the three Choice cards, keeping track by the cheering of the crowd, I'd just need to get her Heart Pieces and I'd win.

Would that even work? I thought.

Better than nothing, I decided.

The game started and I set to work clearing random Stickies on the board. Eventually, I hear a cheer when I uncover a Choice card. I know from the sounds around me, Pinkie's already got two Choice cards so I'm losing.

I start to focus on the Heart Pieces so I can uncover any Choice cards under them while taking them from Pinkie. I could smell where the heart pieces were and, after taking four out of her ten, I heard another cheer when I uncovered my second Choice card.

I take another two, then I hear her take her last Choice card and start in on my Heart Pieces. The next Heart Piece I get after that uncovers my last Choice card, leaving only three more Heart Pieces. I take the last three, almost gagging on the last one as it goes down my throat sideways, and with a humungous road of the watching crowd, I won my first Dynamo game in quite a long time.

I stuck around and kept providing Stickies to the Dynamo players and even played a few rounds, learning how to make the Stickies not come in sideways as often. I didn't see Pinkie there again until I was there just this morning.

Even though I didn't see Pinkie, she had apparently kept tabs on my progress until I went there to deliver the Stickies and she challenged me to a special version of Dynamo. To add difficulty, both players must place a single salmon in their mouths. Having a large object like this in our mouths would make it harder to inhale the Stickies needed to win the game, that I could probably get around. What I was worried about was the smell the salmon gave throwing off the scent of the Spectra on the Heart Pieces.

Despite all that, I decided to accept the challenge. I told myself it was all in good fun, but I didn't really believe it.

I stuck the salmon in my mouth and Vinyl tied my blindfold and tie on while Rainbow Dash tied Pinkie's.

The salmon was fresh, so the smell could definitely be worse. I could still smell the red Spectra, I just needed to be closer.

The game started and I furiously sucked up Heart Pieces. It was insanely difficult to get enough suction past the fish to swallow the Stickies but I did what I could. Pinkie was going at a much faster rate and I could tell she got lucky and found two Choice cards. I picked up the pace and got all of her Heart Pieces without uncovering a single Choice card. I started picking random ones and the third one I picked was a Choice card. But Pinkie had found her last Choice card as well so I went faster, finally starting to get used to inhaling Stickies with a salmon in my mouth. After downing I don't know how many Stickies, I uncovered my second Choice card and then my third immediately after.

I had won.

Apparently, though, the salmon variation was something nopony could defeat her in, so here I am, galloping for my life away from Pinkie.

So now you're all caught up.

I gallop through the door of Sugarcube Corner and briefly consider dying my mane and changing my name to 'Tenderhoof' or something like that.

I skid to a stop when I see Pinkie in the middle of the road in front of me.

How did she get past me?

She smiles, salmon now removed. "Wow, you really are good. Nopony beats me at that game. You must be really something."

Oh. Okay. So maybe she wasn't glaring at me and this was all a big misunderstanding.

I trot back to Sugarcube Corner with her and she whispers something into my ear. "I hope your windows are locked, tonight."

Or maybe she's jut waiting to kill me in my house.

"It's better to be safe than sorry," she says.

I'm so confused.

We trot back into Sugarcube Corner and watch Vinyl play against an earth pony stallion named Caramel.

One thing's for sure: I'm going to keep my windows locked, tonight.