Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

GLR

"So, funny story, I found out this online game I used to play back in middle school got its servers shut down a few years ago, but then a couple years later a group of fans got together and reverse-engineered the whole thing, and now it's playable again. Still a bit buggy in places, but they're patching it up. I've gotten back into it."

"And how is it?"

"Oh, it's every bit as awful as I remembered it, a black hole that sucks away your life with ever-increasing waiting times to upgrade your buildings so you can produce more resources to upgrade your base even further and produce even stronger units and defensive turrets in a never ending spiral of growing numbers that feasts on your basic human instincts. But at least now there's no company behind it, so it's impossible to speed things up by paying real money for premium currency, so everyone is stuck with the waiting. So when you find a stronger player you know they wasted hours to get there instead of dollars. I'm only playing it because of nostalgia, and I think it's the same for everyone else, really."

Indigo Zap momentarily raised an eyebrow, then her expression returned to normal. "Alright then. Are you playing it right now?"

Lemon Zest shook her head. "No, I have buildings under construction at the moment, no point keeping it open. I would keep it in the background, but the current build doesn't handle idle players well. It crashes and needs to be restarted, so I might as well not keep it open. Not while attacking is still bugged and I don't need to worry about optimising my online time so people can't steal my resources." She kept on typing at her keyboard.

"Why do I get the feeling that means you once spent a whole day straight never leaving the game just for that?"

"Because I did." Lemon looked at Indigo. "Hey now. If you don't get all the stupid things done and out of your system when you're young you're gonna have problems when you feel the need to do them as an adult."

"I don't think that's how that works. Anyway, what are you up to now, then?"

"Right now I'm creating a bunch of fake accounts to skew the results of a pool on this website." Lemon turned back towards the computer screen. "It would be a lot easier if people didn't keep voting for the other option."

Indigo Zap just rolled her eyes at that. "What's the pool about, anyway?"

"Porn."

A moment of silence stretched on. "Do you have no shame?"

"Specifically, what this girl should do next."

Indigo resisted the impulse to smack herself in the face, though it was a close thing. Then another impulse came to her. As stealthily as one could, which is to say not particularly, she slid her chair next to Lemon's. "What are the options?"

Lemon just turned the screen a little, as she once again picked the one she was trying to push the pool towards.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

If you don't get all the stupid things done and out of your system when you're young you're gonna have problems when you feel the need to do them as an adult.

Speaking as someone with decades of experience in stupid things, I can confirm that that is in fact not how it works.

In any case, friendship takes on a different tone at Crystal Prep, but it's still there.

[Sunny]

10428753
Agreed, you come up with even awesomer stupid things to do as an adult

[HarpyYoshi]

Since I'm reading this now, is this a Clash of Clans reference?