This Game of Mine

by Swan Song

|♫| ɪᴠ. The Ecstasy

 

  
 
 

S E V E R A L   M O N T H S   A G O . . .

S I L V E R   S P O O N

 

Dovetail’s back was turned, her hand cannon firing shots downrange.

She was distracted. I had her. This was my chance.

With a manic grin, I leapt from behind the tree and charged the armored filly. Raising my auto rifle, I squeezed the trigger, a stream of electrified lead bursting forth from the barrel.

“RAAAUUUUUGHHHHH!”

Click.

With a blink, I realized my weapon’s sights had drifted straight into the clear blue sky above us.

“Your recoil control is awful,” came a snide voice. I glanced down towards my enemy, and was immediately staring down the barrel of a magnificently-crafted hand cannon.

POW.

Grrrrrrr…

---

I lashed out with the butt of my rifle.

BAM! It smacked straight into her side with a meaty crunch, and the force of the blow sent her flying backwards, her hooves grinding into the dirt as she slid to a stop several meters away.

I sprinted madly towards her again, ready to deliver a final blow.

Suddenly her eyes shot back up at me and she leapt forward with alarming speed—the last thing I saw was her forehoof sailing towards my face.

BAM!

I slamed into the wall behind me, and everything exploded in a cloud of electrified dust.

As I slowly faded from consciousness, her sickly sweet voice intruded upon my awareness, like a squeaky specter gloating over her victory.

“Trying to best a Titan in melee combat?” she chided. “Brilliant plan, Starswirl.”

Grrrrr…!

---

She turned the corner and already had her sights on me, as if she had known that I was there all along.

“Drat!” I raised my shotgun, and only managed two blasts before I was overwhelmed with a hail of automatic fire, my body slumping to the floor in mere moments.

“The motion tracker is your friend,” the filly hummed in merriment as she trotted casually over my corpse, before turning to glance back. “Well, except for when I’m using it.” She raspberried.

Grrrrrrr!

---

Back turned. Looking away. Engaged in a fight with somepony else.

I raised my rifle and charged her again, closing in for the kill. It had been a week since the last time I had encountered her like this, and my aim had improved significantly since then.

As I began to pull back on the trigger, she suddenly snapped around like a whip—her weapon sights locked onto my head like a magnet, and she immediately opened fire.

I returned fire, but far too late—I was dead before I could even empty half my magazine! What the hay—?!

“I’m surprised you can’t even hear yourself sprinting,” she chuckled, snatching up my spare ammo bandolier. “Might as well be wearing a cowbell!”

GRRRR!

---

We stood mere meters apart, panting heavily from our exertions. Our energy shields were down, our weapons empty.

We were both vulnerable.

But I had an ace up my sleeve: my super ability was charged.

I leapt to my hooves, swept a foreleg before me, and unleashed my Nova Bomb. With a flash, three dark orbs of barely-contained void energy erupted forth, sailing inexorably towards her form—and not a split second later, she had already leapt straight upwards! As her leg boosters lifted her into the air, the orbs crashed into the ground, their impact producing a maelstrom of otherworldly flames that ineffectually licked at her hooves.

“Seriously?!” I yelled at her. “How did you even know I was super-charged?!”

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” she sneered as she reached the upper arc of her jump. “You glow. Like me.”

“What do you mean, ‘like you’—”

Oh.

So that’s what that blue glimmer around her body was.

Almost on cue, her leg boosters cut off, and her entire body lit up with furious arcs of electricity as she sailed straight towards me, hooves outstretched.

FWOOOOM.

---

“GAAAHHHH!”

As the match ended, I angrily flopped down onto the bridge of my ship.

“How the hay does she do that?!” I shouted at nothing, smacking the floorboards with a hoof.

Honestly! It had been nearly half a month of this. Day in and day out, I followed Dovetail into the Crucible, hoping to face off against her each time, trying everything I could to one-up her and make her life a living Hel. I could feel myself getting better—my aim with a rifle was improving dramatically, and I was slowly beginning to master my control of the void—yet almost every single time I managed to confront her upon the battlefield, she annihilated me without breaking a sweat!

And of course she had to be a pompous blowhard about it.

“I swear to the Sun and Stars beyond, that intolerable filly is all kinds of unnatural,” I growled, the tone of my cold snarl seeping into the low timbre of Shadow Song’s masculine voice.

“It’s just practice.”

What the—?!

I glanced up towards my dashboard, where a floating video screen had appeared over the controls, showing a petite, white-coated terran, her messy red hair streaked with sharp yellow accents.

“D-Dovetail?” I stammered, unfamiliar with the countenance of the filly’s unarmored state—though she confirmed my guess with a gentle nod. “How did you—”

“We’re still in the matchmaking lobby,” she said in the familiar, squeaky voice of Sweetie Belle. “Pretty much everyone from the last match can still hear you, though I think we’re the only two with microphones.”

“Er…” Suddenly, my mind flashed back to all of our other battles over the last several weeks, which often ended with me angrily shrieking obscenities into what apparently hadn’t been thin air after all.

“You have some colorful swears,” she giggled, and I felt my face heat up.

“W-what is it that you want?” I muttered.

“Just to say hi, I guess. I’ve been seeing you in a lot of my Crucible matches, for some reason.” She cocked her head inquisitively. “Have you been following me?”

I felt myself go pale. “Er…”

She’s onto you. Think. Think.

“I mean, it could be the matchmaking system just putting us in the same games a lot,” she continued, “but for something that’s supposed to be mostly randomized…”

“No, you’re right,” I interrupted her. “I admit, I’ve been… joining your matches specifically.”

The beginnings of an explanation began forming in my head.

“Really.” She leaned back with a smirk. “Now you’ve got me curious.”

“It’s just…” A pause. “If I’m being completely honest… you’re a very talented player.”

Yes. That’ll work. Sweet-talk her. Appeal to her ego. This is your chance to get close.

“One of the first matches I ever played, you were on the enemy team,” I continued, affecting my speech with a mounting air of appreciation. “And every time I encountered you, you bested me almost effortlessly. I couldn’t help but find your talent—” I grit my teeth “—admirable. You became somepony to look up to.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? That’s… I’m flattered.”

It was working. I could barely abide the vile utterances coming from my lips, and it was all I could do to set aside my pride in order to express them. But by the Stars, it was working.

“Yes,” I said with a vigorous nod. “And I eventually decided that I’d strive to be as talented as you were. Perhaps the more I played against you, the more I could hopefully discern what it was that made you such a capable, efficient player. I hoped that, someday, I could emulate it.”

A moment of silence befell the bridge.

“Kiss-ass.”

WHAT.

I stared dumbfounded at the little mare. “…Excuse me?”

“You’re full of it,” she continued, her expression hardening. “Every match we play is a team game. I’m not the only one who wipes the floor with you.”

I winced.

“And yet, even though you have an entire squad of players to fight against, and several objectives to complete, you always make a beeline straight for me. It’s like you’re out to get me, or something.”

“L-like I explained earlier,” I stammered, “your skill is peerless, and I merely wish to test my mettle against someone of your—“

“There are plenty of other players who’ll frag you more than I do,” she declared instantly. “Yet you never pursue them, at least not when I’m in sight.”

“I-I—“

“And don’t even get me started on the bucket of swears you toss in my direction after each match, when you think I’m not listening. They don’t sound like admiration; they sound like malice.”

I flinched.

“So what is it, then?” she sneered with a smug grin and narrowed eyes. “Why chase me into every game? Why ignore other players as soon as I come into sight? Why abandon your team, your objectives—“

“FINE!” I snapped angrily, cutting her short. “You want to know why I always gun for you? It’s simple.”

I leaned in towards the screen and glared at her.

“I hate you,” I spat.

Her eyes widened. “You… hate me?”

“Did I stutter?” I began pacing the bridge of my ship. “Normally I wouldn’t think twice about your otherworldly tendency to destroy me before I can even fire a shot. That alone is infuriating, but forgivable—this is my first video game, after all, and my novice skills could never outmatch yours.

“But the manner in which you carry yourself is utterly vile. Your insufferably cocky attitude. The way you parade around my corpse after every kill like a self-inflated windbag. Your snide remarks in that excruciatingly shrill voice of yours.”

I pointed a shaking hoof at her.

“You and everything you do infuriates me to no end. And that’s why I hunt you down. Because I want to make you eat your words. I want you to get a taste of your own foul tongue. By no means do I have the capacity to do that now, but maybe someday, I’ll be the one pulverizing you into the ground, and we’ll see who’s laughing then.”

I slammed my hoof onto a button on the console, and as Dovetail’s shocked face fizzled out of existence, I finally took a breath, only then realizing how long it had been since my last.

Certainly not a waste of breath, truth be told. After those last several rounds of endless defeat at her hooves, that single moment of brute honesty had been utterly therapeutic.

The airship suddenly lurched as the autopilot began directing me towards the location of our next battle. Glancing over the list of participants, I saw that Dovetail’s name was still in the list. She hadn’t fled.

This wasn’t over.

---

I reopened my eyes.

Through the sights of my rifle, past the thin layer of smoke wafting up from the tip of its barrel, was a filly. She stared at me slack-jawed, her tattered red mane billowing ever-so-softly in the wind. A hole had punched clean through her forehead.

Her silvery magnum clattered to the floor. Her lifeless body followed. In my eyes, the entire scene played at a crawl, almost as if the universe itself had slowed time so that I could relish this singular moment in all of its shocking, violent beauty.

And relish it I did.

I had killed her.

I had killed Dovetail.

---

“Let this defeat be a lesson: only the strong survive.”

As I reappeared on the bridge of my airship, a holographic scoreboard appeared before me.

And on that scoreboard, beside my name, was a single damning number:

One.

I glowered at the numerical glyph, hoping to compel it into taking a different form. But it was defiant in its message. Unchanging. Resolute. Clear.

One.

For an entire fifteen minutes, I had managed naught but a single kill.

I slumped to the floor, tossing my weapon aside—it clattered uselessly against the bulkheads.

This was an exercise in futility. A pointless waste of time. Dovetail was far too good, and I was simply no match for her.

“Fire in bursts.”

…What?

I glanced up at my console, where a holofeed of Dovetail had appeared.

“Don’t hold down the trigger for so long without a break,” came her voice again. “Stop firing every second or so.”

Now she was telling me what to do? And on top of that, she was telling me to stop firing?! The nerve!

“Listen, you,” I spat, rising to meet her eyes. “I only just managed to kill you for the first time. If you think you can trick me into not shooting you—“

“I’m not telling you not to shoot,” she interrupted. “I’m telling you to shoot slower.”

“Pfft! Why? So you can kill me faster?”

“No, idiot, so you can actually hit me,” she said, rolling her eyes. “If you fire your weapon non-stop, the recoil will make you lose control of the rifle, and you’ll end up missing most of your shots. Give the gun a rest every second or so, and use that time to regain control.”

That… hm. That actually made a decent amount of sense.

“Just try it next match, okay? You might actually do a little better.”

The holofeed vanished just as the airship began its descent. I glanced at the discarded auto-rifle lying in the corner.

Fire in bursts…

---

“Your light was not enough, Crusader. Get ‘em next time.”

“Much better,” chirped Dovetail as her feed burst to life.

“You were going easy on me, weren’t you,” I grunted, glaring at her through the feed.

“Actually, no,” she replied with a smile. “You got me good, all three times.”

“And you got me good all six other times,” I spat.

A frown. “Look, you did three times better than your last match, and that was after only changing one thing about your gameplay style. Imagine if you changed more?”

Does it matter? You’ll still always be better than me by leagues, and you’ll always be ready to rub it in my face when you prove it.

“This time, try aiming for other players instead of just me,” she continued. “Remember, everyone else is gunning for you too, and you can’t kill me if they’ve killed you.”

The holofeed disappeared, and as the airship shuddered to land, I started to wonder what even the point of all this was.

---

“I know that’s not the best you’ve got. Now do it again.”

“I’ve noticed something, actually,” came Dovetail’s voice, which—to nobody’s great surprise—immediately followed my reappearance on my airship’s bridge, as had become a common bookend to my matches against her over the last several days. “I’ve seen you use nothing but auto-rifles, and never any other type of weapon. Why?”

Wasn’t it obvious? “They’re like Gryphosi weapons—in real life, I mean. They shoot a hail of bullets very quickly, so I figured they’d kill the fastest.”

“…Eh.”

Eh?

“I mean, sure, that might make sense in real life,” she continued. “But this is a video game, so things are a little different. The weapon types are balanced in a way that’ll make them fair against each other.”

That certainly explains why your puny little revolver can outmatch my fully-automatic assault rifle.

“I’ve noticed that you’re great at acquiring your targets after you spot them. You almost always land the first shot before I can even fire back at you.”

A compliment? That’s rare, coming from you.

”But you’re not very good at keeping that target in your sights once you start firing. Almost every bullet misses.”

Oh. Of course she found a way to turn it around.

“Well sorry,” I retorted. “I can’t be good at everything like you are.”

“Actually, I’m pretty much the same way,” she said simply. “Why else do you think I use hand cannons instead of auto-rifles?”

I… huh?

“I lose control of my gun very quickly, just like you. But a hand cannon fires really slow, which gives me a chance to regain control of my gun after every shot.”

“But if it fires so slowly, how am I expected to—“

“It should be pretty obvious that hand cannon rounds are a lot more powerful than auto-rifle rounds. Even if it shoots slowly, every shot deals a ton of damage.”

“Are you suggesting I do the same, then?”

“Sure. Or scout rifles. Or sniper rifles. The important thing is that you pick what suits your style of play.”

…

Something didn’t make sense.

It had been a few days since my first verbal confrontation with Dovetail, and since then she had been giving me tidbits of advice here and there. And so far, it had worked. I was improving swiftly. I was ranking higher in the scoreboards after every match. I was gaining more kills, achieving more objectives, and becoming more of an asset to my team than a hindrance.

What confused me was why. After I had yelled at her, criticized her attitude, made it plain as day that I despised her… she was giving me advice. She was helping me get better at killing her.

“Shadow?” she asked, clearly expecting some sort of confirmation that I had digested her suggestion. I looked up at her.

“Dovetail, why are you telling all of me this? Why are you helping me?”

A short pause. “Because you can be better than you are.”

The airship lurched.

“Check your armory,” she said quickly as we neared our next destination. “See what other guns you have, and get a feel for them. It’ll take some practice, but you might get better results.”

Her feed winked out of existence. I glanced behind me at the rack of weapons lining the wall of my airship, where the dozens of guns I had found throughout my (admittedly short) adventures were on display, like an exhibit in a war museum. As evidenced by the dust they were collecting, I had never thought to use any other weapon on that rack, save the one whose spot currently lie empty.

Occupying the shelf directly above it was a long, sleek weapon, with a large optical scope mounted to the top. While its size had impressed me previously, I had never sought to use it in the Crucible due to how difficult it was to handle. It fired so very slowly, and was barely functional at close range.

But I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try and mix things up a bit.

---

“Let the sting of this defeat feed your fire.”

Eight.

Two more than my last match. A good number.

“Stars, you’re like a ghost,” said Dovetail, in something of an awestruck voice. Glancing at her holofeed, I could see that her expression matched. “Where did you score that last kill from?”

“On the overhang to your left, as you were rushing my teammate at Alpha,” I replied. “You don’t make a habit of checking your blind spots, do you?”

“You didn’t show up on the motion tracker, so I didn’t think to check.”

“You rely on that too much. I stopped moving as soon as I heard you approaching.”

“Heh, I guess I do,” she said, then gave me a sly wink. “Too bad it wasn’t enough though.”

“It never is.”

“Pfft. Maybe it would be if you stopped using that shabby sniper rifle. Where’d you get that from, the Demons’ Lair?”

Demons’ Lair? “No, I think it’s one of the first ones you receive.”

“Wait, you mean from the prologue?” she asked, wide-eyed. “Why not use something better, like from a Strike?”

“I’ve never done a Strike before.”

“Never done a— you’re joking, right? You’ve never taken assignments from the Vanguard? Have you done anything outside of the Crucible since you first started playing?”

“No, not really.” Not when the entire point was to find you, after all.

“You’ve never explored the Bovarian Wildlands? Or the ruins of Draconis? Or the Shattered Coast of Myrnica?”

I’d never even heard of those places. “No.”

The awe-struck look on Dovetail’s face was amusing, to say the least.

“…Shadow, have you left the City even once?”

“Why is that such a big deal?” I snapped, growing irritated by her disparaging tone. “I’ve only ever been interested in fighting against other players, not ‘exploring the wilds’ or whatever. Why is this such a big deal to you? Let me play how I want.”

“ …I mean, sure, I guess, but…” Her eyes wandered past me, presumably to scrutinize the interior of my airship. “All your best equipment is mass-produced guns and off-the-shelf armor from the City vendors. Even your ship is just a loaner from the dockyards.”

So? “It works fine for me. I’ve been competitive in multiplayer.”

“Adequate, maybe,” she replied with a shrug. “But you can’t excel with early-game stuff. You need to actually get out there and find better gear. Go and discover places in the world. Look for lost treasure. Do a few bounties from the bounty board, maybe a few Strike missions with a team.”

“Team? Where am I even supposed to find a team?”

“I don’t know! Don’t you have any friends that you could go exploring with?”

“No.”

That shut her up. She jawed for a few moments, shocked into silence.

“Shadow… have you been playing alone this entire time?”

“Yes.”

She blinked. Then blinked again. And then again, perhaps for good measure. She certainly seemed rather fond of blinking.

“Wow,” she said, finally. “That must be lonely.”

“Not really,” I replied with a shrug. “I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”

“But there’s so much stuff that you can’t do by yourself!” she exclaimed, incredulous. “Exploring the lands beyond the City walls is dangerous, and Strikes on enemy strongholds are practically impossible without—!”

“I already told you, I don’t do any of that,” I interrupted her with a held-up hoof. “None of it interests me. I just want to fight against other players.”

“More like you just want to fight against me,” she teased.

Oh, there was more truth to that than you knew, Sweetie Belle.

“…Well, listen. A couple friends of mine are joining me later tonight, and we were planning on exploring the ruins of Highcrowne, maybe even see if we can uncover Autumn’s Lair.”

“I have absolutely no idea what an autumn’s lair is.”

“Not many do right now, but it’s the last stronghold of the House of Autumn, one of the ancient noble houses of pre-Collapse Gryphos. They’re coordinating their efforts against the City from there, and the Forces of the City have been trying to nail down its location for ages.” Dovetail pulled up a holoscreen to her side and began flipping through what appeared to be… notes? Maps, handwritten letters, and photographs of once-regal cities ruined by age, all with little annotations scribbled upon them pointing out key details. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, they’ve bunkered down somewhere in the ruins of the old Gryphosi capitol of Highcrowne. If we can find it and take out their leader, we can wrest control of—”

“Enough, I get it,” I interjected, even though I really didn’t get it and didn’t care to. “Why does this concern me?”

Another pause, and she tapped her hooves together in an odd display of… nervousness? “I guess what I’m trying to ask, is… do you maybe wanna… I dunno, join us?”

…

Of the myriad things I expected to do, the last was being invited by Dovetail to play with her, considering the entire point of me having even purchased this game was to do the exact opposite.

“I’m not sure,” I muttered noncommittally. “I don’t really care about that sort of thing.”

“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun,” she implored.

“You really want me to go, don’t you?” I asked, confused by her interest. “Why me?”

“Well, assuming we find it, I’d need a small Strike team to even have a chance of breaking in—”

“But you said you had friends, plural,” I pointed out. “Do you really need any more ponies to join you?”

“Hey, every extra body counts,” she replied with a shrug. “I need all the help I can get—experienced help, specifically—and you’re really not as bad as you think you are. But you really, really need new gear.” A couple more swipes on her holoscreen, and the image of a fearsome, heavily-armed gryphon appeared, a menacing scowl on his face and a huge weapon gripped in his talons. “There are rumors that Drakkaris, the Kell of Autumn, wields a fearsome rifle unearthed from a Golden Age ruin. Imagine how much better you might fare in the Crucible if you’re armed with an ancient pre-Collapse weapon?”

Kell of Autumn? Golden Age? What was she even babbling about now? Obviously these terms had something else to do with the game’s storyline, and I honestly couldn’t care less.

But, on the other hand, having a more powerful weapon with which to dominate in multiplayer was an attractive prospect indeed. If I could get my hands on that rifle, I could easily wipe the floor with Dovetail in these matches.

Unfortunately, if these “Strikes” were the only place for me to get a new weapon, then that meant I needed a team. And with Dovetail being the only pony I spoke to in-game with any regularity, my options were limited in regards to assembling one.

Still, if the only price I needed to pay was to suffer her presence for however long was necessary…

No, wait. This wasn’t just something I had to suffer. This was an opportunity. I could spend some time with her, get to know her a bit, and maybe even pick up on something, anything, that I could later pass onto Diamond for our pleasure.

I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face.

“Let’s do it.”

Comments

[aidenmc3]

Cool

[Timeless Lord Slayer]

7405528 It seems to be a rather clear homage to Destiny. And quite well done, to boot.

[PixelBat]

“Not many do right now, but it’s the last stronghold of the House of Autumn, one of the ancient noble houses of pre-Collapse Gryphos. They’re coordinating their efforts against the City from there, and the Forces of the City have been trying to nail down its location for ages.” Dovetail pulled up a holoscreen to her side and began flipping through what appeared to be… notes? Maps, handwritten letters, and photographs of once-regal cities ruined by age, all with little annotations scribbled upon them pointing out key details. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, they’ve bunkered down somewhere in the ruins of the old Gryphosi capitol of Highcrowne. If we can find it and take out their leader, we can wrest control of—”

....... Whether we wanted it or not, we've stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars. So let's get to taking out their command, one by one. Valus Ta'aurc. From what I can gather he commands the Siege Dancers from an Imperial Land Tank outside of Rubicon. He's well protected, but with the right team, we can punch through those defenses, take this beast out, and break their grip on Freehold.

I don't know why but this immediately crossed my mind while reading that segment, and yes I know Eternity is meant to be Destiny