Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego

by MagicS

A Mammoth of a Problem XXI

“Okay, okay, so let me get this straight cause I think I might have the winning “trunk” right here.” Rainbow Dash said as she looked at the nine playing cards she currently held in her hooves. “You need to make either nine of the same color or three three of a kinds?”

“Correct,” Orsak the chief guard of the eastern gate said as he held nine cards of his own in his trunk.

“That ends the round, when one has gotten one of those specific trunks, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve won,” Kakol, another guard at the east gate, explained. “Points are tallied up and you can get extra if you have multiple cards in a row of the same color. The most valuable trunk is nine in a row of the same color.”

“Ohhh...” Rainbow Dash nodded. “I get it. So just because someone has nine of the same color, someone else could have nine of the same color but higher numbers, and they get a bonus if it’s nine in a row?”

“That’s right,” Orsak again confirmed.

Rainbow Dash looked down at her cards and then back up at the four other mammoths she was playing with. “And the numbers go from one to eighteen?”

“Yes,” Orsak said.

“Cool,” Dash grinned and spread her “trunk” on the concrete table they were using.

Ten through eighteen, red.

The four guards all groaned in annoyance and disbelief and tossed their cards into the air. If beginner’s luck was really a thing they should rename it Rainbow’s luck. Nobody could beat a trunk like that and she got it on the first draw, a cheater would’ve been suspected if any of them got that so perfectly. It was almost comically unfair when it was a card game these mammoths had been playing for ages and they just offered to let Rainbow Dash join in for a round or two.

“Hahahaha!” Dash laughed, kicking her hooves back and forth and holding her stomach. “Hey, what can I tell you? I’m awesome at everything.”

“So it would seem. We should’ve known after hearing and reading everything else about you,” Orsak said as he grumpily picked up the cards.

Rainbow Dash shrugged and flew down to pick some up off the ground too. “So this is what you guys do mostly?”

“When not tallying mammoths coming through the gate, yes,” Nalorkarn told her. He was a very tall and much thinner mammoth than any of the others she had seen, but also very kind and patient.

“And sometimes even when we’re supposed to be doing that,” the last guard, Ballom, chuckled.

Rainbow Dash finished gathering up the cards and hoofed them over to Orsak, who shuffled them back into a full deck. She looked around the little area they mustered in for something specific. “Do you guys keep trumpets here too?”

“No, only Mallom does that because he’s weird,” Orsak said.

“Gotcha,” Dash nodded. Those trumpets were pretty convenient for her sudden arrival at the city.

“Was there anything else on your mind? Anything you wanted to do?” Kakol asked her.

“Not really,” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “I wanted to just say hi and actually talk to you guys, since I was meaning to do that for a while but things kind of kept happening.”

Orsak looked slightly dismayed. “I wasn’t at town’s square the other day during the spring festival but I heard what happened...”

“Yeahhh, that’s nothing you guys need to worry about though,” Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her head. “Nowhere is perfect I guess. And that wasn’t really why I kept putting anything off.”

“It still reflects more poorly on all of us. I wish you had a far more pleasant visit here,” Orsak said.

“Hey, this visit has been like, super pleasant. In fact it’s almost been too pleasant, I like things with more action and excitement. Believe me when I say your city is really, really, nice. I’ve been to a lot of places all over the world, so you know I’m not kidding about that,” Rainbow reassured him and the others.

A mammoth pulling a wagon full of produce came in from the gate and looked over at the four guards and Rainbow Dash. He waved with his trunk and smiled at the pony guest and continued on.

“Someone better tally him down,” Ballom said.

The others whistled innocently until Ballom finally got fed up and grabbed the pencil and tally sheet himself.

“Fine,” he grumbled and took care of it.

“Busy day, huh?” Rainbow Dash joked.

“It is what it is,” Orsak shrugged.

“It’s usually quiet for a while after the spring festival. Mammoths want to rest and you already know how leisurely this city is at the most hectic of times,” Nalorkarn said.

“There are a lot of workers at the farms and quarries taking a vacation from work and spending the next couple of days with their families,” Kakol said.

Rainbow Dash looked over at the gate and some of the other buildings around where they were. It’s true that things seemed quieter than normal and she hadn’t seen as many mammoths out and about today. Usually she’d even see a street performer or two but it seemed they wanted their rest after working at the festival. Pretty much the only thing that did look the same as always was the streets and sidewalks, whoever took care of clearing them of snow early in the morning still did their job.

“Alright,” Orsak said as he shuffled the deck of playing cards with his trunk. “Enough talk for now, let’s play at least one more round, shall we?”

Kakol shrugged. “I don’t think we’ll be too busy not to.”

“And perhaps someone else here has lost their beginner’s luck,” Ballom said as he grinned at Rainbow Dash.

“Don’t count on it, I’m telling you I’m awesome,” Rainbow said, confidently putting her front hooves behind her head and leaning back.

“We’ll see,” Orsak said. He finished his shuffling and deftly dealt nine cards to each player, one at a time.

Rainbow Dash sorted through the ones she got, in total there were five different colors; red, blue, green, gold, and purple. Along with multiples of the same color existing it made for a large deck and theoretically difficult odds for getting a complete trunk right off the bat. Math was not and never would be Rainbow Dash’s strong suit so she didn’t know how unlikely it was to get such a great trunk constantly but she was willing to chalk it up to her naturally winning at everything.

Three blue elevens, three red eights, two green eighteens, and one green two. All she needed was one card for a winning trunk.

Now the likelihood that she would draw the exact card she needed was actually very low, and it was possible that one of the other mammoths playing already had the other green eighteen. The way the game worked, Orsak put the remaining deck down and took off the top card, flipping it over and setting it on the table. The next player could then either take that card or another random one from the deck and then exchange it with one of theirs. You always had nine cards in your trunk.

If another green two revealed itself it might even be better for Rainbow Dash to grab it and exchange it with one of her green eighteens and play the odds of the green twos instead.

The first card that Orsak flipped over was a red seven. Nalorkarn was the next to play as he sat immediately next to Orsak, and Rainbow Dash would be right after him, he grabbed the red seven and pondered for a bit, thinking which card would be the best to give up. He probably had a number of singles that were all equally useless to him.

Finally he decided on which card to get rid of and put down a green eighteen.

Rainbow Dash grinned and picked it right up. “Done!”

More cards were thrown into the air.

Comments

[silvadel]

Don't use all your luck up, RD.

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

Great chapter!

[superfun]

Pfft, dat luck