Pantheon, the Artisan of Baking

by Hawattie

Casual Conversation

Pantheon waited with bated breath for Flash's opinion of his newest creation. He had taken the advice of Baking for Beginners into account and hoped that the simple loaf of bread he'd baked would turn out better than the croissant debacle of yesterday. The fact that the pony hadn't immediately ran for the bathroom was a good sign. "Well...?" Pantheon began to ask, but Flash held up a hoof to cut him off, indicating that he hadn't yet finished chewing.

Several deliberate chews later and Flash swallowed the bread with an audible gulp.

Pantheon leaned closer to the pony, eager to hear what he thought. Finally, after several tense seconds, Flash delivered his verdict. "Not bad."

Tension flooded out of Pantheon's posture and he heaved a massive sigh of relief. When Flash took a second bite of his bread Pantheon nearly shed a single tear of joy. Nearly. He hadn't been so proud of an accomplishment since he'd made his first kill as a lad.

A sudden and insistent pounding on the front door broke Pantheon out of his reverie. The door burst open before either of them could react to reveal an excited Pinkie Pie. She bounced inside and exclaimed, "I just got some super-duper terrific-uper news you guys, and I just had to come over and tell you right away! I heard that there's gonna-"

She froze mid-bounce, somehow managing to stop herself cold a few feet off of the ground. Her eyes were locked on the half-eaten loaf of bread in Flash's hoof. She floated down to the ground as softly as a feather. In a very small voice she asked, "Where did you get that bread, Flash?"

Flash's gaze slowly panned from Pinkie over to Pantheon. Pinkie followed his gaze. "Pantheon, did you make that bread?"

Her tone was unreadable, Pantheon didn't know what answer she wanted to hear. After a second of hesitation he tentatively offered, "Yes?"

Less than an instant passed before Pantheon found himself subjected to a bone-crushing hug. "Oh, I'm so happy for you, Panthy!" Pinkie squealed. "Your baking's come so far already! I just know you'll become a master baker in no time at all!"

The incredible pressure of Pinkie's hug around Pantheon's middle suddenly vanished and he staggered back a step before regaining his balance. The pink mare instead latched herself around Flash Sentry. The unexpected hug forced the breath from Flash's lungs and he dropped the bread. Before the half-eaten loaf could hit the ground one of Pinkie's hind hooves shot out and snagged it. With unnerving dexterity she placed the bread onto a nearby table.

"And don't think I've forgotten about you, Flashy. I know that Panthy wouldn't have made it this far along the path to become a master baker without your unwavering support."

"Unwavering support?" Pantheon mouthed incredulously. Luckily, his ever-present helmet prevented Pinkie from seeing. Out loud he said, "You had something you wished to tell us, Pinkie?"

Pinkie released Flash from her death hug, the stallion flopped to the ground where he immediately started gasping and sputtering for air. "Oh yeah! I almost forgot because I was so happy for you." Somehow, the smile she wore grew even wider. "Princess Cadance announced that there's gonna be a baking contest held in the Crystal Empire. All the greatest bakers from all over Equestria are gonna be there and Cadance asked me to be one of the judges!"

"Good for you, Pinkie," Flash gasped from the ground.

Pinkie thanked the prone pony then looked at Pantheon and, with no warning, her eyes figuratively popped right out of her head. "Ooh, I just had a brilliant idea! Why don't you enter the baking contest, Panth?"

Pantheon looked pointedly at the half-eaten loaf of bread. It was his greatest creation to date and the highest praise it had received was "not bad." He looked back to Pinkie and raised a single eyebrow. He knew that she couldn't see his eyebrow, but it was the thought that counted. "Do you honestly think I would stand a chance?"

She hummed and tapped a hoof to her chin thoughtfully for all of two seconds. "Nope!" she chirped. "But that wouldn't stop it from being both super-duper fun and a fantastic experience! And besides, if you practice a whole bunch over the next two weeks you'll be even better than you are now for the contest."

Pantheon crossed his arms over his breastplate, his eyebrow still raised. "You're not giving me much incentive to enter into a contest which I won't have any chance of winning."

"Please?" Pinkie asked with the biggest, cutest, pleadingest pair of puppy eyes Pantheon had ever seen.

Pantheon was unfazed. If his eyebrow wasn't already raised he would have raised it then.

Pinkie, realizing her normal tactics weren't working, turned her gaze up to eleven complete with lip quiver and crocodile tears forming in the corner of her eyes.

"When have I ever given off the impression that this would work on me?" Pantheon asked Flash rhetorically. Flash didn't respond, since he had been reduced to a twitching, gibbering pile of a stallion mere moments after being caught on the outer fringe of Pinkie's pleading power.

Taking the hint, Pinkie's face immediately returned to normal. Flash breathed a sigh of relief and finally picked himself up off of the ground. "Will you at least come with me to the Crystal Empire to watch the competition? You might learn something from watching the greatest bakers in the land."

Pantheon relented, uncrossing his arms and lowering his eyebrow. "Sure, Pinkie. I'll go to the Crystal Empire with you."

Author's Note:

What?! An update that wasn't after months of hiatus?! Impossibru!

And thus, we have a direction for the story to go!
Thoughts?

Comments

[Battlecrank]

6696956 Isn't he normally like that?

[JohnIsOffline]

Holy crap! More update but short!

[xbox432]

Looks good to me, now Pantheon has a goal to work towards: studying the ways of his peers, surpassing them in the baking arts, and finally crushing them in the next competition!

[La Barata]

You know, I just realized- This fic's alive now, yet League's dead. Kinda ironic.

[Hawattie]

6703367
Funny you should say that, I actually played League for the first time in months today. Carried a couple games as Garen then got bored and wrote this latest chapter.

[La Barata]

6703407 Stopped playing about 6 months back. They've just killed it stone dead. Unless you're a 'pro', Riot wants nothing to do with you these days.

[2weirdy]

6703452

Depends on how you define dead. It's definitely different. But the player base is still growing as far as I know. The subreddit as well.

They've killed the lore, yes. They're currently in the process of somewhat rebuilding it, whether for the better or for the worse remains to be seen.

6702798

That's what I meant actually. Flash sentry canon pretty much literally has no personality.

A direction! Plot development! Excitement! Now to hope you don't go MIA for another year.

[the other sans]

Pantheon waited with baited breath

1. Bated.

[La Barata]

6704219 It's not just the lore, though- If it was, I'd probably still be playing. Older players are leaving the game in droves, and it's because Riot has no use for people who aren't looking for a 'Pro' experience.

90% of the (non-skin) visual changes were made solely for growing the pro tournament base, too. Before League, DOTA was very popular, so now LoL looks a hell of a lot like DOTA. The destruction and relegation of the HUD to the tiniest part of the screen? The pros liked it better that way. Constant little changes, little chunks of fun or original content just chipped away, bit by bit, because it's not 'what the pros expect of the game'.

Not just that, but the real killing blow to it is how obsessed they've become with the meta. For months, I watched as patch note after patch note was rolled out, and there was a common sentiment found in just about every single one:

"We noticed players weren't sticking as close to the meta as we think they should, so we took away a bit more choice to make the decision easier."

It was just constant changes to items, skills, champs and other things that just seemed to have Nanny Riot hovering over us with a broom to gently nudge us back into line with the meta in case we accidentally try to, I dunno, cover for an AFK/ragequit Jungler or something. A good bit of the game's fun was playing around sometimes and seeing if you could make a nonstandard build, but I can't even remember the number of times I checked patch notes and saw something along the lines of "CHANGE: AP damage of move X reduced 79.91%: We noticed players were buying AP items for this character. They shouldn't be doing that."

Not only that, remember when League used to be fun? Like, when it DIDN'T treat itself as seriously as a serial cannibal and would take the time to actually be fun and funny now and then? The pros probably don't- When you tournament play a game like LoL, it stops being fun and starts being work.

Sure, the Reddit's bigger, but the game I dumped 1000+ hours into is dead. It's been sacrificed on the altar of 'competitive players above all', and what's left is a reanimated husk designed to perform as efficiently as possible and have the broadest possible base appeal. It's like watching a friend get turned into a Borg drone. Sure, they get stronger, faster and smarter, but they also get clunky as all hell and lose their soul in the process.

[2weirdy]

6704424
Once again, the game is different. I don't necessarily disagree with you that the game you originally played is dead. At the same time though, League of Legends is more popular than ever, and the game is also still constantly changing.

I feel Riot mainly is trying to change the game to be more competitive, also by removing ways to play the game sub-optimally. I personally don't necessarily agree with that, but at the same time the main thing I like about league of legends remains unchanged; the challenge learning an extremely high amount of game knowledge in order to play most efficiently. That is my idea of fun. I understand it probably is not your idea of fun, and that is unfortunate.

Stating League is dead is an opinion though. It is an opinion that probably a large amount of people share with you, definitely, but the thing is, it's just different. Massively different yes. And any given large change will upset a large amount of people, definitely. But claiming it has lost it's soul is still just an opinion, one that I personally do not share.

[La Barata]

6704589 That's it, though- Whatever this game is, it's simply another MOBA. It's not league anymore. It's as much league as HOTS is now. You can get that same challenge from any MOBA, but that doesn't make it League.

And I suppose that's your and Riot's prerogative, and an opinion that we don't share. It was entirely Riot's decision that attracting new players and pros was more important than keeping League's style, feel and design a thing, and there's nothing we can do about it, so the players who preferred league to whatever this new game is are simply going our own way.

if I were to take 2012 me and show him today's league, the only thing that would be recognizable is champion and item names, as well as the vague shape of the map. There's just so, so little remaining of what first drew most of us to the game that people are voting with their time and money and moving on.

The game simply isn't League anymore. You're 110% allowed to like this new game, and I hope you have fun, but it's not league. It takes more than character names to make a game. Battlefront isn't going to turn into Modern Warfare because I named my profile Soap.

[Hawattie]

6704352
Again, thanks for pointing that out!

[Baraka Obama]

thoughts?

24.media.tumblr.com/19d3a6d4e8704e86d8d94105a50e403f/tumblr_mvlyw1kzkv1sodo64o1_400.gif

[Solemn Vigil]

na.leagueoflegends.com/sites/default/files/styles/wide_medium/public/upload/chefs_splash.jpg?itok=CXQn3dk7