This Game of Mine

by Swan Song

|♫| ᴠ. The Ruin

 

  
 
 

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

 

Crumbling spires rose all around us as Dovetail and I trotted through the silent ruins of the ancient gryphon city of Highcrowne—once a majestic metropolis, now nothing more than the desiccated husk of a long-dead civilization, abruptly brought to devastation by some long-forgotten cataclysm.

Honestly, I was getting just a tad bit bored.

“We’ve been here for an hour,” I grunted as we turned a corner onto yet another roadway lined with dilapidated storefronts.

“I know, I know!” Dovetail groaned. “I just can’t… ugh! This map is confusing and out-of-date, okay?! Nopony's walked these streets in centuries.”

I was pretty certain these streets didn't even exist prior to two years ago, much less a century. Though I had to hoof it to the video game’s creators: they certainly knew how to make an apocalyptic ruin look pretty.

Ironically enough, this appeared to be lost on Dovetail, who, rather than bear witness to the destroyed beauty of the fallen gryphon empire, elected to remain muzzle-deep into an ancient tome of some sort, only occasionally glancing upwards to squint at a glowing map she had projected before her.

“What are you even reading?” I asked, glancing over her shoulder.

“It’s an old book that details the history of the House of Autumn,” she explained. “I found it in an old library that was being protected by a Forlorn patrol just outside Highcrowne.”

Ah, yes. More inscrutable jargon from the annals of illusory video game antiquity. How positively electrifying. “And how, exactly, is this book supposed to help us?”

“Because it might provide some clues as to where their stronghold is,” she said with growing impatience. “I already learned from it that Highcrowne is laid out like a gigantic wheel, and each of the intersticks— umm, interstates…?”

“Interstices.”

“Yeah, those things. Each one was ruled over by a noble gryphon House. Right now, we’re in the part of Highcrowne that was ruled over by the House of Autumn.”

Hmm. How much of this ‘Noble Houses’ concept was accurate to real life? Admittedly I wasn’t familiar with Gryphosi politics. Despite the extraordinary reach of the Silver family, we had never dealt with gryphons directly. Though, in all fairness, that was to be expected, since Gryphos and Equestria had never been on the best of terms even prior to the Cold War.

Then again, after uncountable centuries, it was unlikely that this video game version of Gryphos had borne any resemblance to the real, modern-day Gryphos.

“You say ‘ruled’, past-tense,” I observed. “If Gryphos doesn’t exist anymore, what makes you think this ‘House of Autumn’ is still here? Wouldn’t they have fallen with the rest of the nation?”

She gave me a frustrated sigh, as if explaining very basic knowledge to a child. “Just because the nation fell to ruin, doesn’t mean its people all just up and disappeared. After the Collapse, the survivors regrouped under the remaining Houses, which are now fighting each other for control of Highcrowne.”

Sounded like the problem would take care of itself. “So why not just let them? What does it matter to us?”

I received a blank stare in reply. "You really weren't kidding about not having played the story at all, were you."

I shrugged. She knew the answer to that already, and it didn't bear repeating.

She let out a frustrated sigh. “They’re not just gonna kill each other off. Eventually a House is gonna emerge on top, lay claim to Highcrowne, and attempt to restore the glory of their fallen civilization.”

Oh no, we certainly didn’t want that, did we. The big, bad, scary gryphons, reasserting control over the fictional facsimile of a crumbling metropolis.

…This was such a colossal waste of time.

After mustering a gigantic sigh, I finally asked her: “Dovetail, why are you even bothering?”

“Shadow, we can’t let them regain their power,” Dovetail continued, returning her attentions to her little floating tome, oblivious to the true intent of my statement. “These gryphons stopped being ‘noble’ during the Collapse. Now they’ve become Forlorn, shadows of their former selves driven mad by Chaos. Once they’re done killing each other, they’re gonna turn on us and New Everfree—”

“That’s not what I mean, Dovetail,” I interrupted. “I’m asking you why you’re bothering to do all… this. In a video game.”

Dovetail froze. She slowly turned to me, her face scrunched up in confusion as she attempted to comprehend my question. “All ‘this’? All what? What’s that supposed to mean?”

It meant exactly what I said.

Despite my exceedingly low opinion of Sweetie Belle, I had borne witness to her antics almost every day for the last three years. Thus it was probably safe for me to say that I knew her. Or, at least, I knew of her life circumstances.

Like most fillies our age, Sweetie Belle had her entire life ahead of her, with a litany of struggles to overcome, goals to achieve, and opportunities to seize. We were in our final year of school, poised precariously upon the teetering cusp of adulthood, preparing for yet another chapter in our storied lives. And, if her life was anything like mine, this particular chapter was undoubtedly the busiest and most hectic of any other she’d experienced to date.

But instead, instead, she was choosing to waste her life as ‘Dovetail’, gamboling about in this video game world, solving inconsequential mysteries and fighting non-existent enemies in service to an adventuring career that would never have a meaningful impact on her actual life.

It wasn’t a complicated question.

“Why are you playing this game?” I reasserted. “What’s the point of all this? Why does any of it matter?”

For a moment, her jaw gaped, her face struck with an expression of pure disbelief. “I… what?! Isn’t it— that doesn’t even make sense—!”

“Right, which is why I’m asking.”

In fact, I daresay the staggering idiocy of this decision was beyond comprehension. It betrayed every possible logical thinking process ever devised by intelligent life. It was irrational to the highest degree.

Apparently some fraction of this sentiment had become clear to the filly, if her total loss for words was any indication. After a few moments of irate sputtering—ooh, how I relished in her indignation—she managed to fire back with a meagre: “Well, why are you playing this game then, Shadow?”

“For sport,” I replied without hesitation. “It’s no different than a game of chess. I test my mental acumen against other players in contests of skill to see who emerges on top.”

“Well there you go—”

“No, Dovetail. Our situations are not comparable. I play at most for one or two hours a day. You’re devoting inordinate amounts of time and energy towards studying the convoluted history of a fictional world so that you may do battle against an imaginary threat.”

She blinked again, taken aback by my assessment. “S-so what?! It’s fun!”

“It’s wasteful. How old are you?”

“Huh? I— I’m thirteen,” she stammered. “But what does that even—”

“Then you are not at an age where you have time to dawdle. If you dedicated nearly half the time you spent in this game towards fruitful pursuits, you’d be capable of—”

“Are you seriously pulling that card?!” she snapped back, her anger surging forth. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from someone who’s playing the same game as me! ‘Oh, you can do anything if you just set your mind to it!’”

“It’s true. You could accomplish so much more—”

“YOU THINK I HAVEN’T TRIED?!”

I flinched as her shrill voice blared into my ears, echoing throughout the dilapidated ruins of Highcrowne.

Urgh! If there was anything infuriating about Sweetie Belle, it was her bestial temperament. How this insufferable filly emerged as the most ‘ladylike’ of her little cabal was utterly beyond my comprehension—

…

Wait.

Was she…

…was she crying?

Oh Stars, she was. Dovetail had fallen into a defensive crouch, angry tears blossoming forth in her quivering eyes as she barely managed to choke back sobs. The tome she had been reading just moments ago lay discarded a good thirty meters away, apparently tossed aside in a fit of rage.

Clearly I had touched a nerve.

How delightful.

“Well then I daresay you haven’t tried hard enough,” I surmised with a disdainful grin.

“Don’t you dare talk to me like you know how hard I try,” she snarled. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Ironically enough, I did! Not that it mattered, of course.

“I don’t need to know you,” I sneered, “to know how irresponsible it is to squander so much energy on such a fruitless—”

“EVERYTHING IS FRUITLESS!” she suddenly roared. “EVERYTHING IS A WASTE OF TIME! NOTHING EVER WORKS!”

To absolutely nopony’s great surprise, Sweetie Belle was losing control of her social graces, as she was wont to do whenever anypony even dared to disturb the agitated hornet’s nest that was her trigger-happy temperament. Stars, what an outburst! It was certainly providence that we were having this, er, ‘discussion’ over the Stratonet. Her manic expression looked ready to kill, her wild gaze fixated on mine…

…until, unexpectedly, her eyes turned downcast. With a shudder, she slowly fell back onto her rear, and all of her fury vanished in an instant.

“Nothing ever f-fucking works…”

Ah, yes. Despair.

I had her cornered. Now, she was utterly vulnerable. Prime opportunity for the predator to swoop in and claim its—

“You know, I don’t even have my cutie mark yet,” she announced quite suddenly.

Why yes, dear Sweetie Belle, I in fact did know that. But I certainly appreciated you supplying that little morsel for me, so that I could save myself the effort of exemplifying your pitiable situation—

“Hilarious, right?” she continued in a low tone laced with feigned mirth. “I’m thirteen, and I’ve been trying non-stop for years now. And I still don’t have it.”

Oh, she was making this far too easy. Of course, her own self-derision wouldn’t stop me from pointing out how utterly pathetic she was.

…but something else did.

Her voice.

The first time Sweetie Belle had ever opened her damnable muzzle in my presence, I about had an allergic reaction. She had the most infuriatingly chipper voice imaginable. It was bubbly and squeaky and maddeningly shrill, like the incessant yapping of a hyperactive dog having just inhaled a lethal dose of helium.

That, combined with a defensive temper primed on a hair trigger, had made Sweetie Belle coalesce in my mind as a tightly-wound coil of reactionary idealism that was entirely blind to her own inadequacies. In lieu of attempting to address her own faults, she merely bulldozed her way through them, deluding herself into thinking that they wouldn’t come back to bite her perpetually blank flank someday.

This was not the voice of that filly. In its stead was one that sounded… defeated. Tired. Resigned.

In all my years of knowing Sweetie Belle… I had never heard this voice.

“I know I have talents,” she continued in that same listless drone. “I can sing. I can dance. I’ve been picking up fencing, too. And cello, and sewing, and cooking, and all sorts of things. My sister and my teacher and my instructors all tell me that if my heart’s into something, I can learn it really fast.”

That was surprising. I didn’t realize that she had that diverse an array of skills.

“Why not hone those talents?” I asked.

“I do!” she retorted defensively, though her crestfallen bearing was quick to retake its hold. “Or at least I try to… but it never seems to go anywhere. Nothing sticks. After a certain point, I just hit this… this ceiling, where it feels like I can’t get any better. I keep making mistakes. Simple ones. Stupid ones. And I try to learn from them and fix them, but then it slips my mind, or I get distracted, or something, and I screw it up again.”

She held up her forehooves and stared at them for a moment, as if questioning their purpose.

“I can’t ever just… get it right.”

…

Quite frankly, her propensity for failure was not a surprise to me. At all.

Sweetie Belle had always been a bit of an… anomaly to me. She was very clearly not a stupid pony—loathe as I was to admit it—and yet it always seemed like catastrophe followed her everywhere she went. And it wasn’t just limited to whatever foul misfortunes she would inflict as part of her activities with Ponyville’s homegrown terrorist organization, the Crusaders.

Even in school, it always seemed like she was constantly struggling to keep up. For every moment she lit up with the correct answer to one of Miss Cheerilee’s questions, there would be another where she had missed homework, or forgotten a simple fact, or made basic errors on a test that any sane pony would have easily caught.

With every mistake, every oversight, every egregious failure, she would apologize profusely and vow upon the Sun and Stars that it wouldn’t happen again, infusing each apology with the same delusional confidence that she always carried about herself. And despite all assurances, it would happen again, and again, and again. Like clockwork.

I think that was what intrigued me so much about the filly. In defiance of all logic and reason, she was a walking disaster. And, like watching a train derailment in slow motion, observing her came with its own morbid sense of eagerness to witness whatever tragedy she would be responsible for next.

But still, one couldn’t help but be baffled by the dichotomy. How was it that Sweetie Belle, who was unmistakably of above-average intellect, could make so many dumb mistakes? Was she simply that oblivious to her own shortcomings?

…Well, apparently not, if her words just now were any indication. She at least possessed just enough self-awareness to feel guilt and regret, something that I had never thought the filly capable of.

And it wasn’t like she was terrible at everything.

“If you struggle so hard with success,” I reasoned with her, “then why do you put so much effort into this video game?”

She glanced up at me for a moment, blinking. Evidently, this was not a question she had considered before.

“You said it’s impossible for anything to ‘stick’, and you can’t just ‘get it right’,” I continued, sitting down next to her. “So what makes this video game different? You’re clearly very good at it. That contradicts your earlier statement.”

“I… I dunno,” she eventually managed.

“You… dunno?”

“I dunno!” she repeated, shaking a bit. “I really, really don’t know how to explain it, Shadow. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I can’t explain it.”

Well, at least she acknowledged the contradiction. Of course, that still didn’t answer the question.

A few moments passed in silence as she looked off into the distance.

“It’s just… it’s easier, for some reason,” she eventually said. “Things make more sense here. I mean, it has to, right? It’s a video game. It was designed to be winnable. Like, I know exactly what I need to do to succeed, what I’ll get when I do, and when I’m going to get it. Experience points, or new weapons and armor, or money, or a new ship.”

“What makes real life any different?” I asked. “If you work hard, you reap the rewards.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to work, sure,” she replied, “but what happens if you work really hard at something, and nothing ever comes from it?”

“Then you merely have to be careful about how you choose to spend your time. It is, after all, a precious commodity.”

“That’s the scary part,” she said with a heavy sigh. “How do I know what I’m doing is ‘the right thing’? There’s so many things out there, but if I want to make a living off of any of it, I have to spend a lot of time to become really good at it, and maybe even money, if it means I have to attend an Academy to get a degree. So what happens if I pick the wrong thing? How do I even know that what I’m doing is the right thing? How much of my family’s money will I waste before I figure that out?”

I… supposed there was an inherent risk in making a career choice. It wasn’t one I had ever worried about myself, as my future had always been obvious: take the reigns of the Silver Mining Company from my mother. And, I suppose, I always had a financial fall-back in case things ever went south, Stars forbid.

But I could never figure out Sweetie Belle’s angle. Up until now, I had thought that she was simply careless and braindead about her future.

The reality was proving to be very different.

“I know that every minute I spend in this game is one that could have been spent better elsewhere,” she muttered. “I know that nothing I do here will ever mean anything in the real world. But even if it’s not real, I just… can’t help it, you know? At least this way I can get a tiny glimpse of what it’s like to not feel so helpless all the time.”

…

That’s all this was, then.

A power fantasy.

In her hooves was the power to take control of her destiny, to seize her fate, to secure her future. And she, instead, chose this.

She knew all of her problems. She was aware of her own shortcomings. And it was clear that these things consumed her with regret and guilt. But despite having a high degree of self-awareness—the one tool absolutely necessary to begin improving herself as an individual—she, instead, chose this.

I could never grow to respect a pony as pitiable as her.

“Ugh, listen to me,” she said with a dry chuckle. “Dumping half my personal problems on a complete stranger from the Stratonet.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Shadow. Guess I kinda just… ranted for a bit there.”

I bit my tongue. It would be pathetically easy to devastate whatever shattered remnants of her ego persisted, right here, right now.

But her last statement had illuminated something about her.

I had barely known her for a week, and the vast majority of our interactions had been antagonistic and competitive. Yet here she was, pouring her heart out to me, ‘a complete stranger from the Stratonet’.

It was plain as day: Sweetie Belle was a very, very trusting filly. And she had bestowed that trust upon me almost unconditionally.

I had my easy-in. The seeds of companionship had been sown, and all that was left was to nurture them, lull the filly into a false sense of security, lead her to believe that I was a pony she could trust. Perhaps, with enough time and patience, she would simply volunteer all of her deepest darkest secrets to me.

Oh, the prospect was delectable, indeed.

But first, I had the unenviable task of endearing myself to her.

Slowly, I put a hoof to Dovetail’s shoulder, and was met with no resistance. “It is no trouble. You’ve clearly been bottling that up for a while. All it took was for somepony like myself to wander by and trip the fuse.”

“Well, you were kinda being mean about it.”

“I have a policy of brute honesty. If I see a pony slipping up, I’ll tell them. Even if it causes a bit of discomfort on their part, it’s the only way they’ll get better. How else would they know what to fix otherwise?”

“That’s… true,” she admitted. “Is that why you’re so willing to take my advice when it comes to the Crucible?”

“You’re clearly a superior player. It’d be unwise not to defer to your experience.”

“Heh, yeah, I guess.” She hummed in thought. “Say, you seem pretty grown-up. How old are you, anyways?”

Hm. Personal questions. The filly was clearly attempting to visualize what kind of pony I was. Perhaps, with the right answers, I could mold this image into something favorable, influence her such that she would create an idealized construct worth admiring, making her more open to suggestion should the need ever arise.

But I still needed to be vague.

“Old enough to know what’s what,” I answered cryptically. “More than that, I cannot say.”

“Aw, c’mon,” she whined. “Not even a hint—”

Pop-pop-pop!

Several plumes of dust erupted before us, and within moments, both Dovetail and I were on our hooves. Weapons raised, we darted into the cover of a nearby store awning and began scanning the ruins for the source of the gunshots.

“Crap, I forgot we were in hostile territory,” she muttered.

“No matter,” I grunted. “They may have the jump on us, but if we identify them quickly—”

“That was a warning shot!” yelled a voice, hawkish and shrill. “You’ve crossed into the realm of the House of Kings!”

“Horseapples,” muttered Dovetail, her face paling noticeably. “It’s a gryphon player.”

Slowly, we turned towards the source of the voice, and were met with the hulking visage of a beastly gryphon. It gripped a massive machine gun in its claws, errant sparks of arc energy crackling from its electrified barrel.

“State your intentions,” the gryphon declared with a ferocious growl, “or be fired upon.”

---

Comments

[Namelesskk]

God, I hate silver Spoon so much. Worst kind of person.

[The Dimension Traveler]

7091496 Worse than an axe murderer? Worse than a child rapist? I would encourage you to be more careful with your superlatives.

[Timeless Lord Slayer]

7405566 Indeed. From what I can see, both sides have their points and faults.

[quantum04]

“I can’t ever just… get it right.”

It’s difficult to express how much I identify with Sweetie Belle on this. Focusing myself on tasks, even ones people around me consider simple, can go south as easily as they can be finished. Learning the fundamentals is easy. Applying them is a piece of cake. If my heart isn’t in it, though... well, I guess the fact that I’m writing this right now is enough of an example. Unlike Sweetie Belle, this has gone on long enough that the people that once supported me now view me as Silver Spoon does. And, of course, they never really approved of my internet usage in the first place.

Anyways, this is a really good chapter! Loving how the story is going and I’ll probably update and flesh out my opinions when I get to the latest one. god i really hope this isn’t dead

[Swan Song]

10707690 Yeah. It's tough. It feels like it takes ten times as much effort to do a thing as it does for other people.

Hang in there, friend.