> Shimmercode: Syntax Terror
>  by FanOfMostEverything
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Coronal Crass Inflection
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conversations at the Rainbooms' lunch table didn't take a turn for the absurd. That would imply that they didn't usually go in that direction. They occasionally took a turn for the relatively mundane.

"And it turns out Spike has been doing these videos for months, practically since the Friendship Games! He has a fandom. He has a trope page. He has an entire subreddis!"

Today was not such an occasion.

As Twilight paused for breath, Pinkie spoke up. "Wait, you didn't know about Fancy Fetch? I figured you were the one doing his editing."

"Actually, um..." Fluttershy toyed with her hair, the long locks currently arranged to one side, the better to block Twilight's line of sight. "That was me." 

Magenta light parted her hair like a curtain, letting Twilight's stare through unhindered. It wasn't an angry stare. It was, if anything, distressingly neutral. It was the look of a young woman who didn't recognize that the novel assembly of biochemicals she was about to destructively analyze might object to that kind of thing. "Why?"

A hand on Twilight's shoulder got her to release Fluttershy. "Okay, Twilight?" said Sunset. "You're at a nine. We need you at maybe a three, three and a half."

After a moment, Twilight's face all but lit up. "Sorry. Especially to you, Fluttershy. It's just... Mom and Dad put a lot of trust in me when they got me that credit card, and finding surprise charges on it, especially of that magnitude..." She turned to her lunch tray and poked at her salad. "Well, I might have panicked a little."

"Just a skosh," said Fluttershy, who'd edited the raw footage and chose to say nothing about the teal flames and translucent raven wings that Twilight had manifested midway through her lecture on responsible spending habits. It was hardly the first time.

Twilight frowned and looked back at her. "My point stands, though. Why didn't either of you tell me about this? I mean, yes, it's clear that Spike's fan base—have I mentioned how crazy it is that I'm discussing my pet dog's Internet fan base?" 

Applejack raised an eyebrow, reached under the lunch table, and effortlessly lifted the entire thing a few inches before gently setting it back down.

"Right, sorry, forgot our lives are insane in general." The eyelid twitches stopped after Twilight took a deep breath. "I'll try not to let it happen again."

"Spike wanted to surprise you," said Fluttershy.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Well he certainly did that."

"Also, I think he planned on paying you back with his Benefacteor."

"Of course he has a Benefacteor. I'm surprised he hasn't gotten a sponsorship from a VPN service or something." Twilight grumbled to herself and supported her head in one hand as the other stabbed at her lunch.

Sunset cleared her throat. "So, uh, speaking of us on the Internet, it's getting around that time for another Shimmercode guest stream."

Dash's eyes lit up. "Awesome! Another Wonder vs. Cartcom 3 win streak comin' my way."

"Ooh! Ooh! Peyote Simulator!" Pinkie waved an original GameStation jewel case with Neighponese text against a cryptic, pixelated background. "They said they destroyed every copy, but I have my sources."

"Hey now, don't go gettin' ahead o' yerselves," said Applejack. "I figure Sunset'll wanna nice relaxin' time makin' somethin' in Cubecraft."

Rarity gasped and clasped her hands under her chin. "Ooh, yes, like that portrait of me we made together!"

"I was thinkin' more a house, but that'd work too. Or maybe a castle like Sunset said she used t' live in."

"Huh." Sunset put a hand to her chin. "We'll have to revisit that idea. We can't exactly do it on the stream, but making Equestrian Canterlot in Cubecraft does sound fun. But I didn't pick the next guest; I let the subscribers vote on it."

"And they didn't pick 'Guesty McGuestface'?" Pinkie whistled. "You must have the best audience ever!"

"More like I didn't allow write-ins," Sunset said with a smirk. "But I'm afraid they didn't vote for any of you."

Twilight blinked and looked up from her grumbling. "Well... I wouldn't be averse to—"

Sunset shook her head. "Not you either, Twi." She leaned over to look at her prospective guest. "Fluttershy, you ready for another round?"

"Me? Really?"

"Her? Really?" Applejack smacked Dash's forearm. "Hey, I'm happy for Fluttershy, I just wanted to kick Sunset's butt on camera."

Rarity gave her a half-lidded stare. "Rainbow, I watched some of that stream. Hers was not the butt being kicked, as it were."

"Fluttershy, your guest stream was one of the most popular I've ever had," said Sunset. She rolled her eyes. "And I figure half of it was my reaction to you actually kicking my butt. I'm sure a lot of my viewers just want to see me rage again."

"Everyone likes schadenfreude!" cried Pinkie. "Except when they don't."

After a few moments stroking her hair, Fluttershy said, "Well, I did have a lot of fun last time. And it's much easier to perform when I can't actually see the audience."

"Great! Though I should warn you, this time things are going to go differently."

"Are we not playing Nutsy's Fun-Time Scurry?"

"No, this time we're doing something a bit more..." Sunset's smile shifted to something that would have suited her before the Fall Formal. "Hardcore."





"Come on. Come on!"

"Oh! Sunset, I—"

"Just relax, Fluttershy. I've done this kind of thing dozens of times before. This is perfectly normal for this part."

"I... I mean, I have done it a few times by myself but— Oh!"

"There we go! Now the real fun can start!"

"I mean, this is... nice, but I've never done it in front of... of an audience before."

"It's okay, Shy. No one's judging. We're all just here for some fun. And maybe to make a few bucks, am I right, folks?"

"I mean, I..."

"Worst case scenario, we'll have clips on EweTube to laugh at with everyone else."

"H-How many of our friends watch this again?"

"Pretty sure the whole school was talking about last week. Twilight did things I've never thought of."

"Oh my..."

"Now..." Sunset paused to check her Spasm channel's chat log and scowled. "Oh, real mature, guys. Yeah, you all hang on to that audio, it's the closest you'll ever get."

Fluttershy looked over from the TV that was probably bigger than Sunset should have been able to afford with a job at a mall food court sushi place, currently displaying a mostly black screen. The flickering flames in one corner showed that the connected PC was still loading the next stage of the newest update to Tirek's Revenge, Circus Pandemonium. "Um... what?"

"Nothing to worry about, Shy. Just the Internet being the Internet."

"Oh." Fluttershy shuddered and recalled the last time she'd looked over Zephyr Breeze's shoulder at his computer. It had taken an entire squeeze bottle of hand sanitizer, a neodymium magnet, and a flask of holy water for her to feel clean again, and that had just been for the laptop. "They should all be ashamed of themselves."

Sunset smirked and nodded. "Yes. Yes, they should." A guitar riff sounded from the smaller monitor at the TV's side. "Hey, emanresu69! Thanks for the five thousand bits! 'Forgive us, Flutter-sama,' followed by about seven exclamation points and a crying emoji." She shook her head. "Pretty sure you'll need more cute cat videos to buy her forgiveness, guys."

"They do help," Fluttershy said with a giggle.

A low bass drone from the TV cut off any further banter. Both girls turned their attention to the screen, where their avatars dashed into a grim arena painted red by the glow of open magma flows and the viscera of past victims. Every piece of the scenery was covered in skulls, blood, black iron spikes, red-and-black diamond patterns, or some combination thereof.

Sunset rolled her eyes. "Okay, Tirek, we get it. You're an evil demon."

"No offense?"

That got a snort from Sunset and a torrent of lols in chat. Few if any of the stream's viewers knew the origin of the running gag, but it had taken a life of its own on Shimmercode.

The evil demon in question appeared in the corner of the screen, or at least his head did, along with the text of his booming proclaimation. "IMPUDENT MORTALS! THE RINGMASTER HAS BEEN FAR TOO LENIENT WITH YOU! ONLY ONE MAY FACE ME IN THE GRAND FINALE."

"Can't always get what you want," said Sunset.

"Um..." Fluttershy gulped as familiar, crackling clouds of demonic magic flowed across the edges of the screen, making both player characters seize up and glow as red as their surroundings. "I think he's going to this time."

"LET US SEE WHO HAS THE HONOR OF DYING BY MY HAND!"

Sunset leaned her head back until it was drooping of the edge of the couch and groaned. "Ugh, forced PvP, really? I thought they'd learned their lesson after the Cliffs of Betrayal in the first game. Maelstrom, what are you doing?"

"We could wait it out," said Fluttershy.

"No, if you do that, the game kills everyone. We'll just—" Sunset stopped dead. So did her warlock, chopped in half by Fluttershy's barbarian. "Did... did you just...?"

Fluttershy held up her empty hands, the controller still on her lap. "It's still a cutscene! I didn't do anything!"

Tirek's sadistic laughter drowned out whatever Sunset might have said in response. "A MIGHTY BLOW! BUT NOTHING TO ME!" His enormous torso burst out of the spiky, skull-laden center of the arena, the rest of him still beneath it.

Fluttershy gulped. Sunset had helped her build her character to soak up damage while the much more fragile warlock disintegrated everything within reach. Her solo offensive options were... limited. "Um, do you want to take over?"

She looked over and met a face even more hellishly furious than the one onscreen, with slit pupils to match. "Seriously? Seriously!?" Sunset's hair began to waver in a heat haze. "They pull this kind of cork-horned peevishness right at the end of thirty-dollar DLC?"

"Peevish...?"

"And I will bet you my cutie mark that it's completely random." Sunset leapt to her feet and started pacing, arms flying in furious gestures. "The RNG just decides which one of us it likes more and ruts the others into the dirt like a bunch of mud ponies at a family reunion!"

"Um, Sunset—"

"And it goes for the moon-banished feather duster over the mare who actually runs this stream, because of course it does." Sunset's pacing took her directly in front of Fluttershy.

She tried to lean around, only to track the progress of the ranting girl. "Could you please mo—" A bloodcurdling scream burst from the speakers. When Sunset moved out of Fluttershy's field of view, Tirek goring the barbarian on his horns took her place. Fluttershy sighed and released the controller. "Never mind."

"You think you're so fizzling high and..." Fluttershy turned in time to see Sunset look at her in confusion, gaze going from face to shoulders to hands. After Sunset looked to her own flexing fingers, she said, "Oh." The realization in her eyes turned to horror. She collapsed back onto the couch. "Oh, Fluttershy, I am so sorry."

After a deep breath, Fluttershy sighed. "It's okay, Sunset."

"It's kind of you to say that, but it really isn't. I know it isn't. I swear, I didn't mean a word of that. When Dad got a few licks of salt in him... Well, that was pretty much the only interaction I had with the other tribes aside from wing envy. I never bothered to get to know anypony growing up. I didn't even know what most of that meant before that time I stubbed my hoof in front of the princess." Sunset buried her face in her hands. "And now I'm probably going to get banned from Spasm for that kind of language."

"Sunset, you never actually swore."

Sunset showed no sign of hearing her. "And... Oh Celestia, Fluttershy, I don't know how you can forgive me for that kind of behavior, but I know the others won't. I'm going to have call up Pinkie and Applejack and—"

"Is this about the 'feather duster' thing?"

Sunset drew back like Fluttershy had smacked her. "You can't... Well, I guess you can, but only because you're a..." Sunset trailed off, looked at her hands again, groaned, and facepalmed. "Right. Humans. You have no idea what I'm even talking about."

Fluttershy shrugged. "Well, I think I have a good idea of it, but I also think we have a bigger issue."

"What?"

"We're still streaming." Fluttershy pointed at the camera set just below the TV.

"Oh." Sunset stared at it for several seconds. "So we are." Then she looked at Spasm chat and immediately wished she hadn't. "Horse apples."





So yeah, kind of forgot what world I was on. Twice.

Can you d Sorry. Inside joke. Go on.

The bad news is that I kind of let slip that I'm an alien pony. Not necessarily magical unicorn, but I did give my stream viewers a crash course in Equestrian profanity.

Sunset waited an uncomfortably long time for a response. Though given the way the pages of the magical journal kept wrinkling and unwrinkling into the shape of a pony's forehead, she could guess what was causing the delay.

Is there good news?

Well, people still aren't sure whether or not it was staged. And they're honestly more amused than anything. I was apparently very quotable. But I can't rule out people with worse senses of humor and more interest in my birth certificate finding out about this.

So we need to move up the diplomacy timetable?

Sunset looked to the other side of the bed. Twilight's human analogue hadn't been able to choose between trying to comfort her dear friend and fretting about harboring the most illegal immigrant imaginable and had compromised on a big-spoon death-grip cuddle that left Sunset immobilized from the waist down.

You could say that.