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// Aspis Feathers 
// Story: Sweetie Belle Sucks At Video Games 
// by chillbook1 
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	The next day, Saturday, Sweetie Belle decided that her next gaming attempt should be a solo endeavor. She was planning on using this knowledge to connect with Button, after all, and Scootaloo wouldn’t be there to coach her through a date. Some things, Sweetie Belle had to learn alone. But where to start? The Xbox Live Marketplace was massive, home to thousands of games both old and new. Sweetie Belle was overwhelmed at first, so much so that she had to sit down and write out a criteria for the game she’d play.

Firstly, the game had to be relatively simple and easy to learn. Sweetie had neither the time nor the patience to spend seventy hours learning how to play a game, so she wanted something basic, with few controls that were easy to understand. Secondly, it had to be something she could play alone. Finally, and most importantly, it had to be cheap. Sweetie Belle had already spent almost all of her allowance, so she needed to find something she could afford. After much searching, she found the absolute perfect game: Aegis Wing.

Simple and easy controls? Move, shoot, super attack. Even the game-illiterate Sweetie could figure it out. Solo play? She could play by herself or with up to three of her friends, should she so choose. As for price, it didn’t get much cheaper than free. So, after deciding that this would be the game she chose, she downloaded the free game, started it up, and navigated through the menu. She selected the first mission, Turning Point, read the description for the mission, and selected the purple ship. Then, she pressed the button labeled “Ready”, and the game began.

Sweetie Belle’s ship was drifting through a brownish-orange, clouded sky. Her ship was surrounded in a flashing bubble the same color as her ship. Now, the first thing of any note that Sweetie Belle noticed was the music. It was pretty good, and it did a good job of setting the tone for the game. She didn’t have much time to think about the music, because the first enemy of the level was approaching, just as her shield began to fade.

A little black and red ship, more like a satellite, really, came drifting in from the right. It fired off a little red dot, which drifted only barely quicker than the ship that fired it. With a determined sort of smirk, Sweetie Belle moved downwards and fired at the ship. It exploded after a single jet of purple light, though its projectile continued its trajectory and smacked Sweetie’s ship. The little icon in the upper left that showed her health ring diminished by about half.

“You gotta take some hits to give some hits,” said Sweetie Belle. Two more ships, these ones blue, made their way on screen, firing off a barrage of shots. Sweetie took two more hits and exploded.

“Oh…” Sweetie Belle threw her controller down in disappointment. What she didn’t realize until it was too late was that she still had three more lives, and her ship soon respawned with another purple bubble shield. By the time she grabbed her controller back up, she had crashed into another blue and black ship. She was now down two lives.

“That’s not fair,” whined Sweetie, but she kept her hand on her controller this time. She fired at the incoming ships, doing a decent job at avoiding their projectiles (though she was nicked a few times). After she blew up the last of that group of enemies, she noticed that it had dropped something. It was some sort of rocket, floating and rotating towards her. Out of curiosity, she piloted herself into it. The rocket disappeared, and a new icon appeared next to her health ring: a series of arcing white arrows, and a small number five in the upper corner. 

“Oooo, this must me one of those super attack thingies,” Sweetie reasoned. “I’ll try them on the next group of enemies!” 

That time came soon, as another cluster of red ships flew on screen. For the sake of research, Sweetie Belle pressed down on the super attack button. Roughly a dozen little dots shot from her ship, trailed by purple light. The dots curved through the air, each of them colliding with a different enemy and killing it instantly. 

“Wow! That’s cool!” said Sweetie Belle. She noticed the icon in the upper left had decreased, now showing a 4 instead of a 5. “Hm. I guess the game wouldn’t be very difficult if I could just do that over and over.” She continued on, trying to conserve her special attacks until she really needed them. She was doing good so far, and hadn’t died again since she got the weapon.

Some sort of orbs, blinking with multiple red lights, floated onto the screen, two lines of them tilted towards each other and leaving just a little space for Sweetie to squeeze through, if there wasn’t an enemy ship in the way. Even if it wasn’t, Sweetie Belle wasn’t entirely confident she could make it through such a tight space, even if that was what the game seemed to have intended.

“Nice try, videogame people. Betcha didn’t think I’d have these babies, did ya?” Sweetie Belle grinned, maneuvered higher on the screen, and fired her homing super attack. All of the missiles pursued the ship, leaving Sweetie Belle to collide with what she learned in that moment to be an anti-spacecraft mine. It killed her instantly.

“Come on! What sort of game has enemies you can’t beat?” To make matters worse, the icon displaying her missile count dropped to zero. Even worse so, Sweetie Belle didn’t notice. It didn’t take long for things to get out of hand, with dozens of ships filling the screen with both themselves and their tiny red projectiles. Sweetie Belle, ignorant to her current predicament, wasn’t particularly worried. She clicked her super attack button when she thought she was out of options.

Nothing happened, and her ship crashed into another, both of them exploding.

“I ran out? I only used it twice! Unless…” Sweetie Belle began to think it out. “Unless I lost it when I died! Oh, that makes sense, I guess…”

So, until she uncovered another power up, she was forced to rely entirely on her own skill and reflexes. It was a miracle she made it to the end of the level.

She drifted forward with no enemies coming for a bit, then was met on screen (flanked by two enemies) by what she could only presume to be the boss of the level. It was some sort of rotating black orb, with three blades, like a claw almost. There was a glowing white orb right in its center, some sort of energy core or something, at least as far as Sweetie Belle could tell. It turned red, which Sweetie took to mean that it was time to shoot it. Down to her last life, she played it safe and decided to watch and see what happened first.

The boss ship fired a volley of shots, five at a time and relatively quickly. Sweetie dodged shot after shot, with surprising speed and skill. She felt rather confident in herself, allowing her to slip into a comfortable rhythm.

Then, she dropped her controller and her ship careened into the big boss ship. 

“Dangit!” she exclaimed. Still, it wasn’t all bad. Now, she at least knew how to play, and could probably do it far better. Two more attempts, she wagered, two more shots is all it would take to beat the boss.





Scootaloo stared at her friend with a mix of amusement and fear. She had walked into the room about five minutes ago, and Sweetie Belle had yet to acknowledge her presence. She was, as far as Scootaloo could tell, very much so in the zone. However, as Sweetie Belle was still on the first level of Aegis Wing, and had been for what Scootaloo gathered to be several hours, it was also a bit concerning.

“I’m gonna kick a puppy!” shouted Sweetie Belle, wasting her last life to the same boss.

“You okay there, kiddo?” asked Scootaloo with a smirk. “You seem to be… well, ‘off’ is probably a good word to use.”

“You play games a lot, right?” asked Sweetie Belle, dropping the controller. “Tell me if this has ever happened to you: You do a level, and you get to the end, you make one dumb little mistake, and-"

"You end up messing up in the earlier parts of the level?" offered Scootaloo. "The parts you were doing perfectly?" Sweetie nodded. "Yup. It's what I call 'One More Go' Syndrome."

"I keep telling myself 'I can do it this time', and I keep messing up! And the worst part is-"

"You know exactly how you're messing up, but you just keep doing it. It's so bad." Scootaloo picked up Sweetie's discarded controller. "Aegis Wing, huh? Never played this, but I've heard of it." 

"It's really simple," sighed Sweetie. “It’s literally two freaking buttons.”

“Mind if I give it a go?” asked Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle nodded in defeat, curious as to how well Scootaloo could do on a game she’d never played.

She cleared the first mission on her first try.

“What?! How?!” demanded Sweetie Belle. “On your first try? Your first try!”

“Schmups are pretty universal, and, after you play a Bullet Hell or two, this is cake,” explained Scootaloo. “Besides, you’ve come down with One More Go Syndrome. The only cure is to pass the controller.”

Sweetie Belle sighed in annoyance, frustrated at all the time she wasted on the stupid game. 

“Okay. New rule, Scoots,” sighed Sweetie. “I’m not allowed to game by myself anymore. I seriously need your help, okay?”

Scootaloo nodded, knowing full well that she shouldn’t have left her alone in the first place, not without any semblance of guidance. But she did have to commend Sweetie on her efforts. She was getting better (relatively, of course), and she seemed to be starting to enjoy herself. Maybe this would move past Button Mash and just become a fun thing for the two to share.

Only time would tell.