Chapter 1
You Can't Have Everything Your Way
by Xepher
"Thank goodness you're here," Twilight Velvet said, opening the door. "We're running late already."
"My apologies if I've held you up," Cadance said. "I thought you said seven o'clock."
"Oh, we did, but Night Light got a call, and now we have to swing by the office on the way to the theater." Twilight Velvet turned away from the door. "Honey, she's here," she shouted up the stairs. "Let's get going or we're going to miss the first act!"
There was a mumbled reply and the sound of hooves clomping down the stairs. Twilight Velvet turned back to Cadance. "She's in her room, as always, and I'm sure you know the drill. Help yourself to anything else in the kitchen, but the cake is for an office party tomorrow."
"No worries, Mrs. Velvet, I already ate."
"You aren't the one I'm worried about, deary."
Cadance chuckled. "I'll keep Twilight well away from it, I promise." The sugar high alone was reason enough to keep the filly away from such sweets after dark. She turned and trotted toward the young filly's room.
Pushing open the door, Cadance found the young unicorn sitting at a small table, with Ms. Smarty Pants and two other stuffed animals arrayed around it as well. In front of each were some playing cards, and Twilight Sparkle—complete with a green visor that was several sizes too large—was using her magic to deal more.
"Well what have we here?" Cadance said, by way of announcing herself.
"Oh, Cadance!" Twilight said, excitement in her voice. "You're just in time for the next hoof. Sit down there!" She was a rather imperious little thing, Cadance thought to herself.
"What are we playing?" Cadance asked, tucking her wings and legs in as tightly as possible to fit at a corner of the small table, just to the right of Twilight.
"Poker," Twilight said flatly, and she dealt a hoof of cards to her.
"I'm not sure that's exactly the type of game a filly your age should be playing."
"Tell me about it," Twilight said with a melodramatic sigh. "It doesn't make any sense. But don't worry, I've spent the past two days fixing it. We're playing it my way now."
"Your way?"
Twilight just nodded, and finished the deal, before picking up her two hole-cards and glaring at them. When in Roan... Cadance thought, and looked at her own cards. Not bad, she realized, a pair of kings.
"Okay," Twilight said. "Miss Smarty Pants is first." The unicorn then used her magic to animate the doll, who pushed a small button into the center of the table. Next up were a pig of some kind, who "bet" a small teacup, and a duck, who put forward a piece of chalk.
The action then moved to Cadance, who realized she hadn't brought much of anything with her. On a hunch though, she dug in her saddle bags and found an old ticket to a carnival and put it on the table. Twilight nodded, then looked at her own cards again. "I'm in," she announced, pushing forward a pencil. Smarty Pants made a knock—well, more of a soft thump—on the table, checking.
Twilight dealt the flop: A three, a king, a nine, and another king.
"Aren't you supposed to deal three cards there?" Cadance said.
"No. I told you, we're playing it my way."
Well alright then, Cadance thought to herself.
This time, for reasons known only to herself, Twilight started the betting, by raising a massive book. Cadance recognized it as one of the filly's most prized possessions. The first two dolls folded, but the duck took a bubble pipe from his mouth and pushed it forward. Cadance dug in her bags again, and came up with a half empty pack of gum.
"No," Twilight said. "It has to be something equal to the other bets. It has to be something valuable to you."
"Like what?" Cadance asked, not sure at all how the filly was evaluating the bets.
"Like that," Twilight said, pointing to Cadance's necklace. It had been a gift from Shining Armor when they'd first started dating last year.
"I'm not so sure that's a good idea." Cadance found herself suddenly worried just what the filly had picked up about gambling.
"Why not? I put in my favorite book, and Doctor Quack is betting his favorite pipe."
Cadance frowned.
"Come on Cadance, it's just a game!"
Despite herself, Cadance did want to continue, if only for the glimpse it was providing into the odd little mind beside her. "Fine," she said, taking the jewelry off. "I call with my favorite necklace."
Doctor Quack tapped to check, and Twilight added two more cards, both nines.
Cadance had played a fair bit of poker since she'd started hanging out with Shining and his friends, and she knew her hoof was rather unassailable at this point.
Doctor Quack raised, sliding a piece of paper across the table.
"What's that?" Cadance asked, genuinely curious.
"His medical degree," Twilight answered. When Cadance looked confused, the little filly continued by defining the phrase for the obviously-ignorant princess. "It's what makes him a doctor."
Rolling her eyes, Cadance decided to let that one slide. She probably should have stopped this before, but the winning hoof she had made her want to play it out, even if it was just a fake game. "Okay," she said, reaching for the tiara on her head—what made her a princess—before realizing that wasn't how Twilight's mind worked. Doctor Quack wasn't just betting a piece of paper, a symbol; he was betting his actual degree. She thought quickly, and then the Princess of Love cast a simple illusion spell on a glass heart trinket she had in her bag, making the small, pink token glow softly. "I bet my love."
Twilight's eyes went wide as saucers. "All in!" she said immediately, though she didn't put anything further on the table.
"What are you betting, exactly?"
"Oh, sorry, I thought you knew how to play." Twilight said, her voice calming slightly as it fell back to lecture mode. "'All in,' means that I'm betting everything I have."
"But what is that?"
"Well, I don't have a list prepared, but my friends, my family, my name, all my toys and books of course, and my room, and..."
Cadance held up a hoof. "Twilight, maybe we shouldn't be..."
"No!" Twilight nearly screeched. "You can't take it back. You bet it. You have to finish the game now. You can't take it back!" The filly was nearly on the verge of tears with panic.
"Calm down," Cadance said, reassuringly. "That's fine, and you're right, I did bet. We'll finish the round, but then we're going to have a talk." She was, frankly, worried about her young charge.
Twilight turned back to the table and, concentrating, moved the duck's head in a speaking motion as she let out a "quack" from the far side of her own mouth.
"He's all in too," Twilight said, by way of explanation. "He's betting everything in the pond, and his very duck-ness." The filly turned nervously to Cadance. "Are you going to... to raise?"
"But I haven't even called yet."
"But what you put in was way more than what we had, so the pot is good."
Where did she learn these phrases? Cadance wondered.
"And if you raise," Twilight said. "Then... then we couldn't call. So..." she sniffled, lip quivering, but continued. "So, it'd probably be the smart thing for you to do, because then we couldn't win."
Oh how her heart ached at that. Cadance knew Twilight had a lot of... well, "issues" in that smart little brain of hers, but what sort of twisted logic caused her to give advice to an opponent even when the thought of losing (due to her own mis-or-reinterpretation of the betting rules) was obviously bringing her to tears?
"I check," Cadance said, causing Twilight's quivering lip to hesitantly turn into a smile.
"Okay, let's see 'em folks." Twilight said, back to playing the dealer, even though the redness in her eyes betrayed the now-calm voice. Cadance, knowing now just how much this meant to Twilight, didn't want to win, but she also knew that cheating, even to try and lose, would be a moot point by now. Twilight was surprisingly observant when she tried to be, and right now, her eyes were positively glued to the cards in front of Cadance. The Princess had no choice but to turn them over.
"Four kings," she said.
"Not bad," Twilight said, seemingly nonplussed. "Doctor Quack?"
Doctor Quack obediently turned over his two cards, showing a five and a seven.
"Ooh, three primes," Twilight said. "That definitely beats four kings."
Cadance shook her head in amusement at that. Of course the little prodigy would think a sequence of primes was powerful, but...
"How so?" She found herself obligated to ask.
"Well, poker is about odds. But the original game gets the odds wrong, using only a limited, boring space. But now we're playing it my way, and so over an infinite space, the odds of four out of five random ponies being kings is infinitely more likely than three out of five numbers being primes. And in poker, the lower the odds of a pattern, the more valuable it is."
"I... I can't actually argue with that," Cadance said. And she actually couldn't either. Math had never been her strong suit. "So what do you have, Miss Sparkle?"
Twilight grinned, holding her cards close to her barrel with her hooves, hugging them before placing them on the table. Cadance leaned forward to look at them better. Paper was taped over the front of the cards, the original faces completely replaced by crayon sketches of what looked like her and Princess Celestia.
"I have two princesses." Twilight declared. "Which obviously beats everything."
Cadance quirked an eyebrow.
"There're only two of you in the entire universe, so it's the lowest odds possible."
Smiling, Cadance acquiesced. "Okay, I guess you win."
The little filly dove onto the table, reaching for the pile of bets. Her hooves scrambled to grab the pink heart, but when she pulled it close to herself, the glow disappeared.
"What? What happened?"
Cadance realized she'd forgotten to renew the spell, and the illusion only lasted about a minute or so unless refreshed.
"Give it back!" Twilight started to hyperventilate. "You lost! It's mine, you can't take back your bet!" The little unicorn had tears forming in her eyes.
"Calm down, Twilight, it was just a little illusion, that's all."
"But... but you said it! You said you bet your love! You can't pretend! That's not... That's not FAIR!" She ended with a shriek, loud enough that it was probably heard by the entire block.
"Twilight!" Cadance said in a stern voice. "You know better than to scream and worry the neighbors."
Cheeks turning red, Twilight's anger turned into pure disappointment, even as her voice dropped in volume as requested. "But... you... you said..." she sniffled, before muttering further. "I won it... it was fair, and I just... just... wanted your love and..."
"Oh, Twilight," Cadance said, her own heart aching as she reached out to the filly. "Come here."
Twilight wiped her nose on her fetlock, then hesitantly stepped toward Cadance's embrace. "Twilight," Cadance said after giving her a big hug and bending down to look her in the eye. "You can't win love."
"But... but I just wanted your love like..."
"Twilight, you do have my love! I thought you knew that."
Sniffling still, Twilight wiped her eyes. "I know I... I used to. But you love Shiny now! I wanted it back!"
"Love isn't a prize, Twilight. It's not something that can be won... or lost. It's a gift, one that ponies give to other ponies they really care about. Just because I love your brother doesn't mean I love you any less."
"But..."
"Do your mom and dad love each other?"
Twilight thought a moment, then nodded. "I think so."
"And do they love your brother?"
"I... I guess so."
"And they love you too, don't they?"
Twilight hung her head, realizing the flaw in her logic. "Yeah..." she muttered.
"That's the magic of love," Cadance said, lifting Twilight's chin up to face her. "You can never run out of it. In fact, the more of it you share, the stronger it gets."
Twilight cocked her head in a way Cadance had come to know as "Recalibrating world-view, please stand by." The Princess of Love imagined she could see the phrases "entropy" and "conservation of energy violation" flickering just behind the tear-filled eyes, before the young genius eventually returned to the physical world.
"So," Twilight said hesitantly. "I won, but... you can't actually win love, right?"
"Now you're getting it."
"So even though I won it fair and square, it was really just a small trinket, right?"
"Exactly! In fact, it's not even a real gem, just some cut glass to go on a hoof bangle. Love though, is something much, much bigger."
"But I get to keep the trinket, since I won, right?"
"Umm," Cadance wrinkled her brow. "Yeah, I guess so. But it's not actual love, you do get that, right?"
"I know, it's just cut glass." Twilight hugged her, before stepping back as a smile grew on her face. "But I'm pretty sure the necklace is an actual diamond!"
"Now wait just a min..." Cadance's objection petered off as a the little filly's smile shifted to an off-centered smirk.
"Heh, just kidding," Twilight said, the laughter nervous as she held out the jewelry—the symbol of Shining Armor's love—for Cadance to reclaim. "You, umm, know that, right?"
Cadance wished she could believe that, but nothing in Twilight's world was ever so easily resolved. "No," she said. "You're not."
Twilight's eyes threatened to leap out of her skull before Cadance continued. "But that's okay, Twilight. You can keep the necklace." Shining would understand. In fact, he'd probably understand far better than Cadance herself did. He'd been around his bizarrely wonderful little sister far longer than she had. But she was trying!
Ears slumping, brows furrowing, Twilight pulled the necklace back to her barrel. "Are you... sure?"
"Shining gave that to me, promising he'd always love me. But I know he loved you first. So I give it now to you, with a promise that I will never come between you and your brother."
Cadance looked down, seeing tears forming in the big eyes of the little unicorn. "Re...really?" Twilight sniffled. "I know it me...means a lot to... to you."
"But not as much as you do..." Cadance grabbed the filly with her magic and pulled her into a deep hug, before tussling her mane with a hoof to lighten the mood. "....you little card shark."
"Awww," Twilight said, pulling away and running running her hooves through her mane, trying to straighten it back out, "You know I hate that!"
"Well tough," Cadance said, with a smirk of her own. "You can't have everything your way, you know!"