Caverns & Cutie Marks

by TheColtTrio

Chapter 6: They don’t have any bits

“Do you think we lost him?”

Wits End panted, legs burning from running harder than he ever had before. Part of his mind took note that he had been able to gallop much farther and faster than he would have been able to as a biped, and filed that information away for future use.

The rest of his mind called that part a nerd, and wondered if dying right now would stop the pain in his lungs.

Fluttershy nodded, backpedaling with her wings to slow down. “I think so. A scorpion that big would had trouble holding itself up, let alone chasing three galloping ponies. We were probably faster than it by around fifteen, maybe twenty miles per hour.” The yellow pegasus suddenly became very aware of the two other ponies staring at her open-mouthed, and blushed. “I… I take care of a lot of insects and arachnids. Lots of ponies won’t care for them because of how they look.”

“I- no, I totally get it,” Wits End said, stunned from hearing more words out of Fluttershy than he’d heard all day. “Nice to know we have a Druid with lots of points in Knowledge Nature. That’ll come in handy.”

“So now what’d we do?” Pinkie Pie asked, not showing any signs of exertion from the run. “We’re even further away from that scream that we were before we ran into that big bad bug!”

“It’s actually closer to a spider,” Fluttershy muttered.

Wits End shook his head, taking a seat on the grass. Their frantic escape had taken them away from the hills, and now they were on flat plains of tall green grass; with only the occasional rock or bush to break up the view of the horizon. “The way I see it, there’s two ways this can go down. Either that scream was only to get us into that fight with the scorpion—in which case we’ll have to go back and beat it somehow…”

Pinkie Pie shook her head, bells jingling franticly. “Nopie dokie lokie, thank you very muchly.”

“...Or that scream is our call to adventure, and we still need to get to it, whether we fight the scorpion or not.” Wits End’s horn glowed as he took his cap off, wiping the sweat off his brow. “This’d be a lot easier if the DM had briefed us ahead of time.”

Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion. “Dee ehm?”

“Dungeon Master,” Wits End explained. “If this is anything like D&D, then there’s someone running this whole scenario. That’s what the DM is.”

Pinkie Pie narrowed her eyebrows at the mint-colored unicorn. “What’s a D&D?”

Wits End stopped.”It’s… Dungeons and Dragons. It’s like Caverns and Cutie Marks. I think they’re based on the same system. That’s how I knew about the Knowledge checks and Fluttershy’s abilities.” He knew better than to mention that D&D had nothing to do with ponies, aside from riding them. And with some party members, running them into trees so that they become slightly derpy. I wonder if the other characters from MLP are in here, he thought, mind jumping to a new track. I’d finally be able to figure out if her name is Derpy Whooves or Ditzy Doo.

“Well,” Fluttershy said softly, “Discord is the one who set this all up. I guess that makes him the… DM?”

Pinkie Pie perked up. “So DM stands for Discord Manipulator in this case? Is Discord gonna be floating above us like a puppeteer all the time? Or is he like Celestia raising the sun, but he’s raising our expectations? That’s actually really cool, actually! So he’s, like, setting up this big play for us to act in, but we don’t have any lines written for us, so we gotta ad lib everything, and then he has to ad lib based on what we say, and then-”

“Yes, it’s exactly like that,” Wits End interrupted, fanning himself with his cap. “In any case, either of those cases don’t really give us good incentive to adventure. If Discord really wanted us to do something, he shoulda put us in a tavern with a quest giver, or a town hall, or-”
The raspy sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath cut off Wits End’s soliloquy. “So,” an equally raspy voice growled behind them, “what do we got here, Bugsy?”

“Looks like a bunch’ve wanderin’ piggy banks, Mugsy,” and equally raspy, albeit more feminine, voice responded, along with the sound of a bowstring being pulled back.

“...Or have us captured by the bad guys,” Wits End finished with a sigh. “Shoulda kept my big mouth shut.”

The owner of the first voice, Mugsy, floated in front of the group; a rust-brown pegasus with a longsword held in his hooves. “Now, the way I see it,” he said, “You folks have got two choices. Either you give us all your coin purses or you walk out of here with new holes in your windpipes. Savvy?”

The other voice, Bugsy. stepped into view: a muddy blue unicorn holding a drawn bow with her magic. She grinned, revealing a set of dirty and broken teeth. “You ‘eard ‘im! Give us yer bits!”

“I think we have a problem,” Pinkie Pie whispered.

“What gave you that idea?” Wits End muttered back.

“Um, maybe we can just talk about this?” Fluttershy asked.

The two bandits glanced at each other for a moment. “Sure, we can talk,” Mugsy said, looking back.

“But we talk with bits’n steel,” Bugsy finished. “So hand’m over or we’ll give you ours!”

“...Which one?” Pinkie Pie asked.

Bugsy blinked. “What?”

“Which one are we giving you? Our bits, or our steel?”

“Th’… th’bits.”

“Ohhhhhhh. So we give you our bits, and you give us yours?”

“What? No! You give us your bits, or we give you our steel!”

“So if we gave you our steel, would you give us your bits?”

“That’s not how this works!”

“Well, that’s okay, ‘cause we don’t have any steel.”

Bugsy’s eye twitched. “Then give us your bits!”

Wits End patted his robes. “I don’t have any bits. Do you have any bits, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy checked her saddlebags. “Um, no. I don’t have any bits.”

“Pinkie Pie? Any bits?”

“I don’t!”

Wits End set his cap back on his head. “We don’t have any bits.”

Mugsy looked between the three ponies. “You don’t have any bits?”

“We don’t have any bits.”

Bugsy loosened her bowstring slightly. “You don’t’ve any bits?”

Wits End shrugged. “We don’t have any bits.”

Bugsy looked at Mugsy. “They don’t’ve any bits.”

Mugsy shook his head. “They don’t have any bits.”

“So,” Wits End said, “since we’ve established that we do not, in fact, have any bits, can we leave without any sort of kerfuffle?”

“Hang on,” Bugsy growled, shuffling closer to Mugsy. “What’d you think? No point’n offin’ them if they ain’t got no coin.”

“True, true,” Mugsy responded. “But it would be a shame if this whole thing was for nothing.”

“I don’t like not gettin’ paid,” Bugsy said in agreement.

“We appear to be on the horns of a dilemma, Bugsy.”

“We sure do, Mugsy.”

“If you want,” Wits End offered, “we could let you guys figure this stuff out, and come back later.”

Mugsy perked up. “I do believe I have an idea, Bugsy!

Bugsy’s face lit up. “What’s that, Mugsy?”

With a flourish, Mugsy pointed his blade at the three ponies. “We capture them, and use them as hostages to use against those stupid villagers!”

Wits End blinked. “Villagers?”

Bugsy grinned, pulled her bowstring back again. “That’s perfect! Then, those dopes won’t be able to fight back when we smash’m! Alright, you three. You’re comin’ with us, piggy banks!”

“Oh my,” Fluttershy said, leaning away from the arrow by her face.

“Wee!,” Pinkie Pie said,bouncing in place. “Piggy bank ponynapping adventure! This is gonna be so much fun!”

Wits End sighed, pulling the feather on his cap down over his face. “I think I liked it better when they were gonna kill us…”

Author's Note:

Primary Author(s): Wits End

Comments

[ArcaneVisions]

Gimme the bits! The bits! The fry bits!

[StarzGecko]

that’s funny