[A Magenta Mystery]
Pinkie Pie
LV 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375...
...Well, it was the closest thing he'd ever get to an explanation where Pinkie was involved.
Her title, name, and level were all written in an almost painful neon pink instead of the now-familiar sky blue, and her level kept going, far into the distance outside Spike's field of view. Hoof it to this pony in particular to break through expectations and leave nothing but confusion in her wake... Well, maybe she'd be able to help clarify some things he was thinking about. After all she enjoyed a lot of games herself, plus she helped out with various birthday parties at the arcade...
Beyond all that it was Pinkie. If she didn't have a weird insight into the situation he would eat his hat. If he had one. Scratch that: He'd go get himself a hat, and then eat it. One made of diamonds! Or sapphire, obsidian, whatever. He wasn't gonna be picky.
Given that strange burst of whatever from his Observation, he felt cautious about approaching. In the end he trusted his friends: He put his best foot / claw forward and stepped over to the pony.
"Hey there, Pinkie!"
"Oh! You're up and about super-duper early today Spike: More chores from Twilight, huh?"
Spike wavered one claw in the air ambivalently, reaching for a sample at the same time.
"Mmmaybe. She had some kind of all-day thing up in Canterlot, personal business."
She nodded sagely at that while Spike popped the morsel into his mouth.
"I totally know how that goes! Does it have anything to do with those blue words?"
Aaand a bystander got showered with dumpling debris.
"Sorry, what?"
"The bluewords! Over your head. They're very blue. And kinda words."
"Iiiii think we need to go inside and talk. Um. Whenever you're done doing... this."
Looking around, they realized that everypony had seen Spike, the dragon notorious for eating everything up to and including Baked Bads, spit-taking one of the samples. Weirdly, that led to far fewer ponies (you could even say zero ponies) coming up to take a sample of their own.
"Eh, now's probably fine. I mean, I've gotta get started on today's biiig project anyways!"
She did an about-face and trotted into her home / work, and Spike followed, if a little reluctantly.
"How big are we talking? Because if it's MMMM-level, I'm out."
"Um, not that big. Still big though! Feeds more ponies, but isn't quite so..."
He dodged his way around furniture and ponies alike as Pinkie took as obtuse a path through the store as she possibly could. Thankfully, most of the place was empty, so he got to keep his apologizing to a minimum.
"Complex? Sugary? Enticing? Shrouded in marzipan and / or mystery?"
Pinkie dropped off the remaining dumplings on the counter with a wide smile. The smile, and the rest of her, quickly vanished below the counter a moment later.
"All of the above and below, so shall it be!"
"...Riiight. So it's relatively simple and not brain-meltingly sweet. Would it be alright for us to talk about the, ah, blue words, while you work?"
When Pinkie popped back up, she was wielding an apron, which quickly found its way onto him: He didn't question it, nor did he question the brief pop-up box telling him that he had equipped a 'tabard-slot' item which gave him very minor protection from heat and a Cooking buff. If anything, Pinkie seemed to care more about the notification than he did.
"Oooh, a yellow one this time! What's it say?"
Spike moved to shush her, but it was futile: Even if anypony had been listening, it was still Pinkie. He knew to pay attention to most of what she said because he was a friend, but a lot of ponies in town just wrote it off as Pinkie-being-Pinkie. Which... They weren't wrong, but that didn't mean she was wrong either. It did mean they could talk freely, safe from concerns about ponies wondering what was going on. If that failed? The tried and true standby: "We're just talking about a game."
"Wait, I thought you were really good at reading backwards."
"Uhhu! And upside down. And backwardsupsidedown... cake? No, that'd be too tricky to make in four dimensional space. But all I can tell is that it's got words on it, not what the words are."
...So even to somepony like Pinkie, Spike's UI was something only he could truly see. That was actually kind of a relief: It meant he'd basically never have to worry about being peeped on while he did Gamer things. Pinkie was his gold standard for being able to see the imperceptible after all.
"Let's go to the kitchen and get started on this big project of yours, OK? We can cook and talk."
"Aaww that sounds great! We haven't cooked together in a while~! What was it last, the Morose Muffin Monsters of Maudagascar for my sister's birthday care package?"
"Yeah, that was a good time. Hey, she never did come visit after that."
"Mmmh, yeah. Busy with rock troubles."
"I'll... take your word for it."
The kitchen at Sugar Cube Corner was always immaculately clean when it wasn't being used that exact minute: Pinkie always cleaned up after herself, and the Cakes were very good at watching each other's backs while they worked. Spike had a fair feeling it would get a lot nastier in here by the time they were done, especially if the gigantic him-sized stack of banana leaves had anything to do with what they were making.
"Speaking of words, let's speak some words now!"
Spike was planning to tell his friends about this, but he didn't see any reason to let the information spread too much outside of his own control.
"You sure nopony can hear us back here?"
"Deffo! So spill the beans!"
"Wait, like, metaphorically or literally? Because for all I know we're cooking beans."
She blinked a few times while mulling that over.
"Oh. Right! Mmmmnope, no beans. Leaves, dough, onions, peppers, garlic, squash, more onions, different peppers... but no beans. I meant word-beans."
"Word-beans. Sure. Well, it started this morning with a bad dream about a game, and then I woke up. The bad dream was over, but the game part just kept going..."
He ran down the entire thing so far, each aspect he had discovered or experienced. With some other ponies, he would probably tell them a brief summary or even just the concept alone. But it felt like Pinkie (and likely Twilight, later) would be the kind of pony who would ignore information overload and just wanted to know it all. So Spike told her every last detail, sparing nothing. She was quiet throughout, which didn't surprise him: There was nopony like Pinkie Pie when it came to listening to your problems.
By the time he was finished talking, they were up to their respective wrists and fetlocks in thick corn dough, enough to cover the entire counter... Which was actually the plan, apparently. In the same way that Pinkie had let him speak, he just kind of let the concept of the cooking wash over him without worrying about the details. She knew what she was doing, and he trusted her as a friend. He did almost question it when she broke out the blood-orange dye, because at this point it looked as if the dough under their hands / hooves was kinda... flesh-like.
"So yeah, that about sums it up so far."
"Huh. I guess you're... Nope, I went to make a joke about what kind of game engine you run on, but I couldn't quite get there. Oh well!"
"Pfftha! Yeah, that..."
That... that brought up a good question. All of the game machines he'd ever seen ran on engines: Complicated rigs of pistons, magical capacitors, steam valves and other mechanical oddities. Even the most compact one Spike had seen was barely smaller than a bathroom stall, and they were probably pretty expensive to make and maintain. The only reason Ponyville, being a small village off-mountain, even had an arcade was because they were a "test market" with a direct rail line from Canterlot. So if he was living his life as if it were a game, was it just metaphor? Or did he have an engine somewhere, somehow?
"Gimme a second here Pinkie."
His body certainly didn't feel any different, but given the risks involved in helping Twilight with her experiments, he knew how to check and check thoroughly. All he had to do was zone out, take a deep breath, and relax. Another breath, and relax. Follow the air from his nose down past his palate, throat, lungs, body... And then exhale, tracing back the same path until the air exited his mouth. Feel yourself (not like that) and relax.
It was an easy pattern to fall into, easier now than ever before, and he quickly found his mind racing through the passages of his own circulatory system. Twilight had helped him figure out a lot of dragon biology over the years (his biology, at least, with no other dragons to compare to) so he could visualize it all. Compare the images to the form, follow the patterns, all biological life is based on patterns, remember the lessons. He'd just check this real quick and get back to... whatever it was he had been doing. Already it felt detached from his thoughts, so he shrugged (not physically, mind you) and carried on as he was.
...
Pinkie Pie gently prodded the dragon, who seemed for all the world to be sleeping at a standstill. His eyes were half-closed (in that two of his four eyelids were totally shut) and his claws were curled against the floor. Spike rocked gently when pushed, but did not fall over or respond. After a minute she shrugged and got back to work: He'd probably be awake in time to finish assembling the project. And hay if all else failed, the smell of roasting food would wake him up when she got that far. Pinkie took pride in her roasting.
I mean, it's Pinkie Pie. How is that surprising?
Puns, how I loathe thee, and yet we're porting something to a technological level that's otherwise a century too early so some concessions must be made. Also, Spike: the engine won't be inside you any more than it's inside any given character in the games. Further discussion falls under "philosophy" and I therefore have no interest in it.
LoL, it's things like this that make me question if Pinkie is secretly Deadpool in disguise... with a better profanity filter, obviously. But yeah, it's interesting that she can tell that there are blue words but not what the words SAY. Also, hey! It looks like he's already convinced his first pony that something is going on with him. Hopefully, the others will take it this well.
9893373
A century too early? How so?
The world is a 'Science Fantasy' or at least a high level 'Schizo-Tech Fantasy'.
Pinkie is picking up the extremely blurred images of lines of text thats likely externally a different language as well to anyone that not Spikes mind?
The idea of looking inwards to consider your game engine, reality base, reminds me of something Ive seen in the last couple years where some researchers claim to ave found a way to proove if youre living in a simulation due to errors in the rendering process.
Then I look at other research that says if you do regular aperiodic tiling in n dimentions and dont use a seed, then you get random errors in the rendering process.
Then procedural generated games use a seed.
Is Pinkie making a Human or something? Or would that be for Lyra?
Wonder if his game engine has a level editor.
9893642
I'll defer to the expert here, but they mostly hew to technology from around the turn of the century. And I'm also ashamed of myself for not using the direct anime-translation wording of "a hundred years too early".
9893646
inb4 Spike finds out he has an unbound backwards jump speed?
9893924
Oh dear.
Oh my. I suppose you should never expect that you've reached the end of the surprises Pinkie can dish out.
Well, it is Pinkie Pie, afterall...
Hm. Wonder if "like that" would incur a buff or debuff.
9894143
I suspect that although he would incure several debuffs, he would get extremely buff in certain areas.
9893646
Like there being an arbitrary fixed cap on travel speed? Or a graininess in the FPS? Or a rendering distance?
9894738
Learning curve. If I understand even slightly what certain results imply, we are on the point of finishing the prolog and actually starting the game itself.
I just hope it isnt like Paranoia or some other games Ive heard of, where character creation leads to character deletion even before the game starts.
9894738
Don't forget the other Planck thing, that's clearly the screen resolution. (And they were at least clever enough to hide the rendering distance an extrapolation of other parts of the engine)
what is with the fascination everyone has with cupcakes recently, this is the third story in two days that i have read that has some reference to cupcakes
9934310
That one wasn't a Cupcakes reference, at least not directly: This (very real) type of tamale is actually dyed until its dough looks... pretty overtly meaty. It's an oddity, which is why I knew it had to make the cut as a featured food of the fic (or FFOF for short :P).
I bet she would be pretty good at some creative insults.
Oh-wait, wrong roasting.
Im a total sucker for all the puns so far
Pinkie senpai teach us to play by your own rules
I kinda see Pinkie Pie like a tutorial npc that has significant value until the endgame... One crazy adventure we all would love to read
Neat. Even if there are other gamers or similar individuals his skillset is save.
Great chapter
Not seeing any comments about this, so I'll go ahead and point this out.
Why do you do this to us?
Information are a valuable good in RPG. Spike has a Monopoly on it
He has 4 set of eye lids? Guess one if to keep his eye save in flight, one bathing in lava, one are the normal pair and perhaps one is versus high light levels?