Crystal Prep Gets Bulldozed and Replaced With an "Upscale" Chuck E. Cheese'sby QuillamoreChaptersEASY: Don't Let Your Dreams Stay DreamsNORMAL: Viva l'EeveelutionHARD: Ball Pit Trivia for Fun and ProfitMASTER: Arcade AftermathEXPERT: Horror Games are Like Frozen Custard...EASY: Don't Let Your Dreams Stay DreamsWhen an old rival of yours claims to have lost a bet with the CEO of Chuck E. Cheese’s, you tend to respond in one of three ways. A) You choose not to believe them, B) you laugh in their face, or C) both of the above. Sunset Shimmer, when confronted with this dilemma, did not choose C so much as she repeatedly bashed the metaphorical C button at every opportunity. Over the summer, every time she and her Canterlot High friends would encounter Indigo Zap, they would ask about her personal relationship with Thomas Leverton and internally laugh at her confusion. If she did not even know the CEO’s name, or at least spend all of ten seconds properly researching her lie, it was clearly not worth their attention. “Hey, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing!” Indigo had yelled after them. “Sugarcoat made me go to some rich people gala, I saw a guy there who liked video games, and we hit it off. And then the Friendship Games came up, and I told him, ‘We got this thing so wrapped up, they might as well build a goddamn Chuck E. Cheese’s on top of us if we lose.’” “And you didn’t know he was the CEO when you said that?” Rainbow Dash had asked in her eternal skepticism. “It’s a figure of speech, man! When I say ‘build a goddamn Chuck E. Cheese’s,’ who the hay thinks I actually mean it?” Sure, the entirety of Crystal Prep had already been demolished weeks after the Friendship Games, but everyone had always assumed it was collateral damage from the Midnight Sparkle battle. But alas, arcades have a way of sneaking up on people in ways even interdimensional portals cannot, and by the end of the summer, the writing was already on the wall. Rather than the slightly snooty, yet still architecturally impressive sight they were all used to, they instead saw a slightly larger version of the Chuck E. Cheese’s most non-alien exchange students had once seen in their childhood. All stared at the building with varying levels of confusion: most at the sheer fact that Indigo was actually right about something, Sunset at the building’s actual purpose and just what the hay a ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ had to do with mice, and Twilight and Rarity at something else entirely. “Is it really upscale if it has to say it in red 48-point Stencil?” wondered Twilight. “With three exclamation points?” Rarity chimed in. “Gee, they might as well make the sign explode already!” Even as everypony stared at the building, and at Twilight’s uncanny font-detection skills, several Canterlot High students were seen walking into the Chuck E. Cheese with an excitement that betrayed the grave event that had unfolded. “So…why did you bring us here again?” Rainbow asked, finally turning her gaze to Indigo. “Just to say ‘I was right and you were wrong?’” “Nah,” the former Crystal Prep student replied with an unconvincing scoff. “I had to. Much as I hate the whole thing, Principal Celestia asked all of us to give each Canterlot High student 1000 free tokens before attending CHS.” She unceremoniously dropped a staggering amount of false currency into each person’s arms before turning the other way, not even vaguely desiring to get in on the festivities of her alma mater’s destruction. “Watch out for Sugarcoat, by the way,” she muttered behind her. “If you think I’m pissed about all this, that girl’s got enough salt to clog an artery.” “Ooh,” Twilight called after her, “you did pay attention in sixth-period anatomy!” Just like the wind, however, Indigo Zap was gone, leaving seven students to mourn their former enemy in the most solemn way possible. “I call the Skee Ball machine!” Rainbow Dash screamed at the top of her lungs, rushing towards the arcade as Applejack and Pinkie cursed their loss in the game of dibs. NORMAL: Viva l'EeveelutionFifteen minutes into the event, Sunset and Twilight had barely made it past the front section of the Chuck E. Cheese’s, which was two stories tall and therefore twice as big as any Dave and Buster’s. However, despite its size, there was very little about it that made it truly ‘upscale,’ as even though there was a mini-restaurant coated with glass inside, one could still order subpar pizza and watch animatronic shows on the other side of the building. What’s more, both had a feeling the walls of the fancy restaurant were far from soundproof, and that the cacophony of video games could still likely be heard inside. “I’m cutting you off!” a freshman with pink-and-purple curls yelled as Twilight and Sunset passed by. Her intense green glare was directed at Rainbow’s friend Scootaloo, who brandished a black pipe, decorated to resemble a firehose, with exaggerated bravado. “You know that dumb firefighter game doesn’t give you any tickets. It’s just a money suck that makes you give it tokens every five minutes!” “It’s only asked for three, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo countered. “And I have a thousand. Besides, when it comes to saving the innocent, no price is too much to pay.” Scootaloo struck a heroic pose and put another token in, causing Sweetie Belle to groan even more. “Seriously,” she whispered to Sunset once she realized the older student had been listening in the whole time, “does she even realize this is just a game?” “Who knows?” Sunset chuckled. Meanwhile, Twilight’s eyes were already caught on something else entirely—a vending machine-like device near the firefighter game. As Sunset kept watching, she moved toward it, admiring the objects inside and, more importantly, how she would work up the courage to ask her friend about them. Four machines full of capsules—“gachapons,” as Twilight remembered they were called—lay in front of her, all advertising the same prizes. Cell phone charms like these were the huge friendship trend even when she’d still gone to Crystal Prep, but she’d never had anyone to exchange them with until now. Of course, with everything they’d been through, Sunset was the first person that came to mind to get them with as her best friend in the group of seven. “Where’d you head off to, Twilight?” Sunset asked after talking with Sweetie Belle. When she finally ended up finding her, she was greeted with a strange mixture of embarrassment and excitement. “Rainbow told me you’re into Pokémon now, right? Well, they have a whole thing filled with Eeveelution phone charms, and I’ve kinda got my eye on one.” All Sunset could do was smile as the other girl played with her hair nervously. The singsong way she ended her sentences in times like this was just so cute. And the way she was so coyly suggesting they should get matching straps? It took everything Sunset had not to blush. “You go first,” she replied, trying to keep her skyrocketing giddiness levels to a minimum.“Since it was your idea and all.” She watched as Twilight placed her token in and cracked the knob, already trying to decide which charm she’d want. But, considering it was Eeveelution-themed, it only took her all of five seconds to know. She was a fire type player, after all, and it’d be almost sacrilege to get anything other than— “Espeon!” Twilight cried, opening the capsule to reveal the tiny purple charm. “My favorite!” “That really doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Cute, purple, good with magic...” Even if she hadn’t particularly intended it, her friend was already blushing at the implications. “…so let’s see if I get the same kind of luck, okay?” Sunset acted as cool and collected as she could as she cranked the knob, but on the inside, all she could do was chant Flareon in her head. If this strange human machine could tell Twilight’s ideal Eeveelution with a single touch, then surely she could have the same— Black. The plastic figure inside the capsule was black. “In what world am I Umbreon?” Sunset muttered under her breath, thinking no one would hear. “Same world where pop culture jokes with ‘in what world’ are still funny.” The voice that’d answered her question had been both familiar and unfamiliar, and when Sunset moved to turn around, the third figure was already gone. “Pegged yourself for Flareon, huh?” Twilight asked. “Well, only because everything about me screams it. My hair, my name—“ Just as Sunset was about to rant, Twilight placed the small Umbreon figure straight up against her leather jacket, and all Sunset could do was facepalm. Black with yellow patches, she thought to herself. How could I have missed that? “Oh well, at least it matches something,” she muttered. “And weren’t Espeon and Umbreon released in the same gen, anyway?” “We really do match!” Twilight whispered in realization. The two hugged for all of five seconds before Rainbow Dash came bolting in from across the arcade, already feeling the need to interrupt. “Twilight!” her blue friend yelled. “You can levitate stuff now, right? Help me rig the Skee Ball machine!” Sensing both of her friends glaring straight at her, Rainbow interjected, “We can split the jackpot!” “Nah,” Twilight replied, pulling herself closer to Sunset. Even if Dash wouldn’t have asked her to cheat, she still wouldn’t have wanted to let go. HARD: Ball Pit Trivia for Fun and ProfitOn another side of the Chuck E. Cheese’s, Rarity was barely scraping by for things to do. The hustle and bustle of the arcade was far from her usual territory, though the wad of tickets in her hands said otherwise. She was just making her way to a peaceful, semi-cultured-looking piano-themed game when she made the understandable mistake of walking past the ball pit. “Did you know that most Chuck E. Cheese’s don’t have ball pits anymore?” Pinkie Pie’s head had popped out of the receptacle of plastic balls at breakneck speed, knowing exactly when Rarity would walk past a pit seemingly devoid of people. As she had predicted, Rarity jumped at least six inches off the ground at the sight. “Back in the ‘90s, they were really popular, but supposedly, so many kids started taking the balls with them that there wasn’t enough to put in the pits anymore!” “Pinkie,” groaned Rarity once she’d collected her composure, “what did I tell you about sneaking up on people to tell them useless trivia?” “But it applied to the situation this time!” With a quick shake of her head, Rarity pushed her friend back into the ball pit and walked onward. As she did so, she could barely notice something small falling out of her grasp. The next time she turned around, a boy her age was handing her a long strip of paper. He lacked the colorful skin and hair most of her friends had, and just about everything about him seemed to be covered in beige. “My name’s Carl,” he spoke in a quiet tone, “and I see you dropped some of your tickets there.” Just saying that, Rarity realized as she stared at the ground, was an understatement. She’d won over five hundred tickets in various games of chance, yet only about fifty of them had managed to stay in her hand. Thankfully, she’d noticed before she’d had a chance to get too far in the arcade. Not that she cared about the tacky prizes, but something about it would have been…disappointing somehow. Thank goodness that oddly-named boy had managed to get her attention. In any case, though, she figured it would be far better to pick up what she could and move onto the next thing. Carl, however, wouldn’t give her those sorts of chances. “Don’t you have any pockets to put them in?” he wondered. Gritting her teeth, Rarity could already see Fluttershy standing at the piano game. She could only count down how many moments this inconvenient conversation with a complete stranger would last before she could go over and talk with someone she actually liked. “Well,” she replied. “The sad casualty of women’s fashion means that sometimes, well, we don’t exactly have anything to put things in.” “I see. So you really did pay attention in sixth-period anatomy.” The glare Rarity gave him was almost palpable, and the next reply he gave was, “Bad joke?” However, the fashionista was already walking away. “Wait!” he yelled. “I…I can hold those tickets for you. Just meet me in an hour at the fancy restaurant, and I can give them back.” As transparent of a dating request as this was, Rarity did feel as though she had to hesitantly accept. As annoying as Carl was, he did seem trustworthy enough, and she walked straight over to where Fluttershy was in a heartbeat, leaving him to clean up the tickets. “Are you sure you can trust him?” Fluttershy questioned. “But of course. He just wants me to join him for a fancy dinner and was too afraid to ask outright.As long as I show up at the designated time, everything’s as good as safe.” Sure enough, as the hour passed, Rarity barely even missed the tickets.She hadn’t been near as lucky with her winnings this time around, and so there were no more chances of her dropping any.The time she spent was full of friendly conversation and the classiest of video gaming, and soon, she was about to be off to finish the classiness of the— “He’s. Not. Here.” When the moment came, Rarity scanned through all the surrounding tables, only for them to be completely Carlless. Even after a half hour of waiting, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he still never bothered to show up. It was only then that Rarity realized just how much she had been used. “Oh, I am going to get those tickets back,” she muttered as she paced across the off-brand velvet floors. “That ruffian Carl is about to get a little lesson about cheating from yours truly!” Fluttershy was just about to move out of her booth and follow her friend when a white hand stopped her in her tracks. “All you need to do is have fun and order a nice milkshake,” said Rarity, sounding increasingly neurotic. “A peaceful mind like you isn’t going to want to see what I’m about to do…” She stopped short once she realized that she was actually evil laughing inside a fairly upscale establishment located directly inside a Chuck E. Cheese’s.As she headed towards the one place she knew she’d find the mysterious stranger, she asked Fluttershy one last question. “Strawberry’s your favorite, right?” Fluttershy simply nodded, ordered a strawberry milkshake, and tried not to think about the impending carnage. MASTER: Arcade AftermathA battle was unfolding inside the arcade, and yet no one evacuated. As if hypnotized, their minds were glued to a single game kiosk and a single set of letters. PLAYER: CMC. HIGH SCORE: ∞ Somehow, Carl had been the only one not to notice the sight, too focused on making off with his haul. However, Indigo Zap stopped him in his tracks with a single touch and one of the loudest yells he’d heard in a long time. “Dude!” she screamed. “Check this shit out!” Carl gestured to the animatronic she-demon that was still rampaging throughout the Chuck E. Cheese’s, only for Indigo to shake her head. “That shit happens all the time,” she muttered. “What I meant was, check this shit out!” She turned the hapless thief towards a ticket-eating machine, where a freshman with short fuchsia hair seemed to be feeding it an infinite amount of tickets. Everyone in the arcade looked on as the machine kept counting on and on: 10000, 10001, 10002… It finally stopped at 25000, enough to buy nearly anything in the redemption booth and then some. The lucky gamer’s entourage could only watch in awe as she walked out with a brand-new Nintendo Switch. Even Diamond Tiara, the one person at Canterlot High everyone figured would certainly have one, was already devising a plot to mooch off of the freshman as much as she could. Even if they were friends, there was just no way anyone could know that the richest girl in school didn’t even have a Switch. Above all, she had a reputation to keep. Thoughts of days to come, however, were the last thing on Scootaloo’s mind as she skipped out of the Chuck E. Cheese’s, barely even noticing the rampaging she-demon. Who cared? She had a Switch, and she’d got it for free! Sure, it’d taken all of her tokens to pull off such a feat, but what did Sweetie Belle know? What kind of gamer was she if she didn’t even know about this jackpot? But then, Scootaloo remembered the most important thing of all. More important than Switches, or new friends, or proving Sweetie Belle wrong. Just thinking about it made her want to jump towards the sky and pump her fist into the air, the person she had become in that night at Chuck E. Cheese’s. “Booyah! I am the master firefighter!" Author's Note I have recurring dreams about Chuck E. Cheese’s for utterly inexplicable reasons. This fic was the result of me fusing two or three of them together and thinking it would be a good random fic. Let’s hope I was right. Oh, and that last sentence is one of the best ones I’ve written. EXPERT: Horror Games are Like Frozen Custard...“No way in hell!” Rainbow Dash yelled as Applejack and Pinkie dragged her towards another part of the arcade. She could see Rarity running towards the same area she was being led towards, and internally begged her friend to save herself. It was already too late for her. “You lost at Skee Ball,” Applejack spoke, “and now you have to do whatever I want. We’ve all had our fun here, and all Pinkie and I want to do now is watch the animatronics show. That ain’t too much to ask, is it now?” She said those last words with a smug grin on her face, knowing just how much they’d make Dash’s skin crawl. As much as she tried not to be fazed by the animatronics in the back of the arcade, she’d been avoiding their gaze all night, and Applejack had a lingering suspicion as to why. “I’m not doing it!” screamed Rainbow. “You know those things freak me out!” “And she finally admits it. The only question is, how long have you been afraid of them? Or perhaps I ought to ask…why?” “Yeah, Dashie!” Pinkie chimed in. “All they do is sing goofy songs and glitch out. And the glitches are so funny that they’re almost half the show!” Every hair stood on Dash’s multicolored mane as they brought her ever closer to her imminent destruction. She, alone, knew how dangerous those robots could be. They were haunted, for Faust’s sake, and possessed with bloodlust! Or, at least, that was what her new guilty pleasure told her. “Relax,” Pinkie continued. “Nothing bad happens at Chuck E. Cheese’s unless they serve alcohol. This one doesn’t, but in California, they did, and it caused two bad bar fights in a row. So as long as this one doesn’t, you’re safe as gold confetti.” Neither Applejack nor Rainbow Dash bothered asking where California was, just chalking it up to the usual cavalcade of weird things Pinkie seemed to know. “Fine, fine, I admit it!” Rainbow yelled after several random facts. “It was Five Nights at Freddy’s. I wasn’t scared of anything before then, but then I marathoned it in one night and…” Dash shuddered from the memories, even as she’d continued trying it nights and nights after to get a better time. “I totally understand,” said Pinkie Pie. “I did Five Nights at Freddy’s, too. It all started when this frozen custard place started putting job ads around the school—“ “I don’t think that’s the same Freddy’s Dash is goin’ on about—“ “—and I thought, hey, cool, free ice cream! Or frozen custard, but anyway, I got a job at Freddy’s, but then they told me I could only get free custard every five nights! They wouldn’t even let me buy any until I got everything done on Fridays! So obviously, I quit after the first five nights. It…was…horrifying!” By the time Pinkie’s rambling had ended, the gates to hell had opened before Dash, and the demons were cheesy animatronic animals. Pinkie and Applejack gripped onto her hands as she helplessly watched their dance, knowing they could reach out and devour her at any moment. “Carl, I know you’re in here!” Rainbow Dash could hear Rarity shout as she bolted across the auditorium. “You know what you have to answer to!” Before that weirdness could go on any longer, however, someone else had already stormed into the room. A bolt of blue lightning that Dash could vaguely recognize as Sugarcoat sped across the stage, her body outlined with an ominous black aura. Before anyone could lift a finger to protest, the former Crystal Prep student tore an animatronic figure in two with her bare hands, screaming with an inhuman voice as she transformed. “You did this to me!” she boomed. “And you will pay for destroying Crystal Prep!” In the one place the seven thought they were safe, a she-demon had made her presence known once more, with one important difference. Applejack and Pinkie took each other’s hands, ponying up in a stream of light. Seeking their companions, who had been scattered throughout the arcade. Staring into the she-demon’s cold, animatronic eyes. Not even noticing that Rainbow could only cower under the table.
EASY: Don't Let Your Dreams Stay DreamsWhen an old rival of yours claims to have lost a bet with the CEO of Chuck E. Cheese’s, you tend to respond in one of three ways. A) You choose not to believe them, B) you laugh in their face, or C) both of the above. Sunset Shimmer, when confronted with this dilemma, did not choose C so much as she repeatedly bashed the metaphorical C button at every opportunity. Over the summer, every time she and her Canterlot High friends would encounter Indigo Zap, they would ask about her personal relationship with Thomas Leverton and internally laugh at her confusion. If she did not even know the CEO’s name, or at least spend all of ten seconds properly researching her lie, it was clearly not worth their attention. “Hey, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing!” Indigo had yelled after them. “Sugarcoat made me go to some rich people gala, I saw a guy there who liked video games, and we hit it off. And then the Friendship Games came up, and I told him, ‘We got this thing so wrapped up, they might as well build a goddamn Chuck E. Cheese’s on top of us if we lose.’” “And you didn’t know he was the CEO when you said that?” Rainbow Dash had asked in her eternal skepticism. “It’s a figure of speech, man! When I say ‘build a goddamn Chuck E. Cheese’s,’ who the hay thinks I actually mean it?” Sure, the entirety of Crystal Prep had already been demolished weeks after the Friendship Games, but everyone had always assumed it was collateral damage from the Midnight Sparkle battle. But alas, arcades have a way of sneaking up on people in ways even interdimensional portals cannot, and by the end of the summer, the writing was already on the wall. Rather than the slightly snooty, yet still architecturally impressive sight they were all used to, they instead saw a slightly larger version of the Chuck E. Cheese’s most non-alien exchange students had once seen in their childhood. All stared at the building with varying levels of confusion: most at the sheer fact that Indigo was actually right about something, Sunset at the building’s actual purpose and just what the hay a ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ had to do with mice, and Twilight and Rarity at something else entirely. “Is it really upscale if it has to say it in red 48-point Stencil?” wondered Twilight. “With three exclamation points?” Rarity chimed in. “Gee, they might as well make the sign explode already!” Even as everypony stared at the building, and at Twilight’s uncanny font-detection skills, several Canterlot High students were seen walking into the Chuck E. Cheese with an excitement that betrayed the grave event that had unfolded. “So…why did you bring us here again?” Rainbow asked, finally turning her gaze to Indigo. “Just to say ‘I was right and you were wrong?’” “Nah,” the former Crystal Prep student replied with an unconvincing scoff. “I had to. Much as I hate the whole thing, Principal Celestia asked all of us to give each Canterlot High student 1000 free tokens before attending CHS.” She unceremoniously dropped a staggering amount of false currency into each person’s arms before turning the other way, not even vaguely desiring to get in on the festivities of her alma mater’s destruction. “Watch out for Sugarcoat, by the way,” she muttered behind her. “If you think I’m pissed about all this, that girl’s got enough salt to clog an artery.” “Ooh,” Twilight called after her, “you did pay attention in sixth-period anatomy!” Just like the wind, however, Indigo Zap was gone, leaving seven students to mourn their former enemy in the most solemn way possible. “I call the Skee Ball machine!” Rainbow Dash screamed at the top of her lungs, rushing towards the arcade as Applejack and Pinkie cursed their loss in the game of dibs.
NORMAL: Viva l'EeveelutionFifteen minutes into the event, Sunset and Twilight had barely made it past the front section of the Chuck E. Cheese’s, which was two stories tall and therefore twice as big as any Dave and Buster’s. However, despite its size, there was very little about it that made it truly ‘upscale,’ as even though there was a mini-restaurant coated with glass inside, one could still order subpar pizza and watch animatronic shows on the other side of the building. What’s more, both had a feeling the walls of the fancy restaurant were far from soundproof, and that the cacophony of video games could still likely be heard inside. “I’m cutting you off!” a freshman with pink-and-purple curls yelled as Twilight and Sunset passed by. Her intense green glare was directed at Rainbow’s friend Scootaloo, who brandished a black pipe, decorated to resemble a firehose, with exaggerated bravado. “You know that dumb firefighter game doesn’t give you any tickets. It’s just a money suck that makes you give it tokens every five minutes!” “It’s only asked for three, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo countered. “And I have a thousand. Besides, when it comes to saving the innocent, no price is too much to pay.” Scootaloo struck a heroic pose and put another token in, causing Sweetie Belle to groan even more. “Seriously,” she whispered to Sunset once she realized the older student had been listening in the whole time, “does she even realize this is just a game?” “Who knows?” Sunset chuckled. Meanwhile, Twilight’s eyes were already caught on something else entirely—a vending machine-like device near the firefighter game. As Sunset kept watching, she moved toward it, admiring the objects inside and, more importantly, how she would work up the courage to ask her friend about them. Four machines full of capsules—“gachapons,” as Twilight remembered they were called—lay in front of her, all advertising the same prizes. Cell phone charms like these were the huge friendship trend even when she’d still gone to Crystal Prep, but she’d never had anyone to exchange them with until now. Of course, with everything they’d been through, Sunset was the first person that came to mind to get them with as her best friend in the group of seven. “Where’d you head off to, Twilight?” Sunset asked after talking with Sweetie Belle. When she finally ended up finding her, she was greeted with a strange mixture of embarrassment and excitement. “Rainbow told me you’re into Pokémon now, right? Well, they have a whole thing filled with Eeveelution phone charms, and I’ve kinda got my eye on one.” All Sunset could do was smile as the other girl played with her hair nervously. The singsong way she ended her sentences in times like this was just so cute. And the way she was so coyly suggesting they should get matching straps? It took everything Sunset had not to blush. “You go first,” she replied, trying to keep her skyrocketing giddiness levels to a minimum.“Since it was your idea and all.” She watched as Twilight placed her token in and cracked the knob, already trying to decide which charm she’d want. But, considering it was Eeveelution-themed, it only took her all of five seconds to know. She was a fire type player, after all, and it’d be almost sacrilege to get anything other than— “Espeon!” Twilight cried, opening the capsule to reveal the tiny purple charm. “My favorite!” “That really doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Cute, purple, good with magic...” Even if she hadn’t particularly intended it, her friend was already blushing at the implications. “…so let’s see if I get the same kind of luck, okay?” Sunset acted as cool and collected as she could as she cranked the knob, but on the inside, all she could do was chant Flareon in her head. If this strange human machine could tell Twilight’s ideal Eeveelution with a single touch, then surely she could have the same— Black. The plastic figure inside the capsule was black. “In what world am I Umbreon?” Sunset muttered under her breath, thinking no one would hear. “Same world where pop culture jokes with ‘in what world’ are still funny.” The voice that’d answered her question had been both familiar and unfamiliar, and when Sunset moved to turn around, the third figure was already gone. “Pegged yourself for Flareon, huh?” Twilight asked. “Well, only because everything about me screams it. My hair, my name—“ Just as Sunset was about to rant, Twilight placed the small Umbreon figure straight up against her leather jacket, and all Sunset could do was facepalm. Black with yellow patches, she thought to herself. How could I have missed that? “Oh well, at least it matches something,” she muttered. “And weren’t Espeon and Umbreon released in the same gen, anyway?” “We really do match!” Twilight whispered in realization. The two hugged for all of five seconds before Rainbow Dash came bolting in from across the arcade, already feeling the need to interrupt. “Twilight!” her blue friend yelled. “You can levitate stuff now, right? Help me rig the Skee Ball machine!” Sensing both of her friends glaring straight at her, Rainbow interjected, “We can split the jackpot!” “Nah,” Twilight replied, pulling herself closer to Sunset. Even if Dash wouldn’t have asked her to cheat, she still wouldn’t have wanted to let go.
HARD: Ball Pit Trivia for Fun and ProfitOn another side of the Chuck E. Cheese’s, Rarity was barely scraping by for things to do. The hustle and bustle of the arcade was far from her usual territory, though the wad of tickets in her hands said otherwise. She was just making her way to a peaceful, semi-cultured-looking piano-themed game when she made the understandable mistake of walking past the ball pit. “Did you know that most Chuck E. Cheese’s don’t have ball pits anymore?” Pinkie Pie’s head had popped out of the receptacle of plastic balls at breakneck speed, knowing exactly when Rarity would walk past a pit seemingly devoid of people. As she had predicted, Rarity jumped at least six inches off the ground at the sight. “Back in the ‘90s, they were really popular, but supposedly, so many kids started taking the balls with them that there wasn’t enough to put in the pits anymore!” “Pinkie,” groaned Rarity once she’d collected her composure, “what did I tell you about sneaking up on people to tell them useless trivia?” “But it applied to the situation this time!” With a quick shake of her head, Rarity pushed her friend back into the ball pit and walked onward. As she did so, she could barely notice something small falling out of her grasp. The next time she turned around, a boy her age was handing her a long strip of paper. He lacked the colorful skin and hair most of her friends had, and just about everything about him seemed to be covered in beige. “My name’s Carl,” he spoke in a quiet tone, “and I see you dropped some of your tickets there.” Just saying that, Rarity realized as she stared at the ground, was an understatement. She’d won over five hundred tickets in various games of chance, yet only about fifty of them had managed to stay in her hand. Thankfully, she’d noticed before she’d had a chance to get too far in the arcade. Not that she cared about the tacky prizes, but something about it would have been…disappointing somehow. Thank goodness that oddly-named boy had managed to get her attention. In any case, though, she figured it would be far better to pick up what she could and move onto the next thing. Carl, however, wouldn’t give her those sorts of chances. “Don’t you have any pockets to put them in?” he wondered. Gritting her teeth, Rarity could already see Fluttershy standing at the piano game. She could only count down how many moments this inconvenient conversation with a complete stranger would last before she could go over and talk with someone she actually liked. “Well,” she replied. “The sad casualty of women’s fashion means that sometimes, well, we don’t exactly have anything to put things in.” “I see. So you really did pay attention in sixth-period anatomy.” The glare Rarity gave him was almost palpable, and the next reply he gave was, “Bad joke?” However, the fashionista was already walking away. “Wait!” he yelled. “I…I can hold those tickets for you. Just meet me in an hour at the fancy restaurant, and I can give them back.” As transparent of a dating request as this was, Rarity did feel as though she had to hesitantly accept. As annoying as Carl was, he did seem trustworthy enough, and she walked straight over to where Fluttershy was in a heartbeat, leaving him to clean up the tickets. “Are you sure you can trust him?” Fluttershy questioned. “But of course. He just wants me to join him for a fancy dinner and was too afraid to ask outright.As long as I show up at the designated time, everything’s as good as safe.” Sure enough, as the hour passed, Rarity barely even missed the tickets.She hadn’t been near as lucky with her winnings this time around, and so there were no more chances of her dropping any.The time she spent was full of friendly conversation and the classiest of video gaming, and soon, she was about to be off to finish the classiness of the— “He’s. Not. Here.” When the moment came, Rarity scanned through all the surrounding tables, only for them to be completely Carlless. Even after a half hour of waiting, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he still never bothered to show up. It was only then that Rarity realized just how much she had been used. “Oh, I am going to get those tickets back,” she muttered as she paced across the off-brand velvet floors. “That ruffian Carl is about to get a little lesson about cheating from yours truly!” Fluttershy was just about to move out of her booth and follow her friend when a white hand stopped her in her tracks. “All you need to do is have fun and order a nice milkshake,” said Rarity, sounding increasingly neurotic. “A peaceful mind like you isn’t going to want to see what I’m about to do…” She stopped short once she realized that she was actually evil laughing inside a fairly upscale establishment located directly inside a Chuck E. Cheese’s.As she headed towards the one place she knew she’d find the mysterious stranger, she asked Fluttershy one last question. “Strawberry’s your favorite, right?” Fluttershy simply nodded, ordered a strawberry milkshake, and tried not to think about the impending carnage.
MASTER: Arcade AftermathA battle was unfolding inside the arcade, and yet no one evacuated. As if hypnotized, their minds were glued to a single game kiosk and a single set of letters. PLAYER: CMC. HIGH SCORE: ∞ Somehow, Carl had been the only one not to notice the sight, too focused on making off with his haul. However, Indigo Zap stopped him in his tracks with a single touch and one of the loudest yells he’d heard in a long time. “Dude!” she screamed. “Check this shit out!” Carl gestured to the animatronic she-demon that was still rampaging throughout the Chuck E. Cheese’s, only for Indigo to shake her head. “That shit happens all the time,” she muttered. “What I meant was, check this shit out!” She turned the hapless thief towards a ticket-eating machine, where a freshman with short fuchsia hair seemed to be feeding it an infinite amount of tickets. Everyone in the arcade looked on as the machine kept counting on and on: 10000, 10001, 10002… It finally stopped at 25000, enough to buy nearly anything in the redemption booth and then some. The lucky gamer’s entourage could only watch in awe as she walked out with a brand-new Nintendo Switch. Even Diamond Tiara, the one person at Canterlot High everyone figured would certainly have one, was already devising a plot to mooch off of the freshman as much as she could. Even if they were friends, there was just no way anyone could know that the richest girl in school didn’t even have a Switch. Above all, she had a reputation to keep. Thoughts of days to come, however, were the last thing on Scootaloo’s mind as she skipped out of the Chuck E. Cheese’s, barely even noticing the rampaging she-demon. Who cared? She had a Switch, and she’d got it for free! Sure, it’d taken all of her tokens to pull off such a feat, but what did Sweetie Belle know? What kind of gamer was she if she didn’t even know about this jackpot? But then, Scootaloo remembered the most important thing of all. More important than Switches, or new friends, or proving Sweetie Belle wrong. Just thinking about it made her want to jump towards the sky and pump her fist into the air, the person she had become in that night at Chuck E. Cheese’s. “Booyah! I am the master firefighter!" Author's Note I have recurring dreams about Chuck E. Cheese’s for utterly inexplicable reasons. This fic was the result of me fusing two or three of them together and thinking it would be a good random fic. Let’s hope I was right. Oh, and that last sentence is one of the best ones I’ve written.
EXPERT: Horror Games are Like Frozen Custard...“No way in hell!” Rainbow Dash yelled as Applejack and Pinkie dragged her towards another part of the arcade. She could see Rarity running towards the same area she was being led towards, and internally begged her friend to save herself. It was already too late for her. “You lost at Skee Ball,” Applejack spoke, “and now you have to do whatever I want. We’ve all had our fun here, and all Pinkie and I want to do now is watch the animatronics show. That ain’t too much to ask, is it now?” She said those last words with a smug grin on her face, knowing just how much they’d make Dash’s skin crawl. As much as she tried not to be fazed by the animatronics in the back of the arcade, she’d been avoiding their gaze all night, and Applejack had a lingering suspicion as to why. “I’m not doing it!” screamed Rainbow. “You know those things freak me out!” “And she finally admits it. The only question is, how long have you been afraid of them? Or perhaps I ought to ask…why?” “Yeah, Dashie!” Pinkie chimed in. “All they do is sing goofy songs and glitch out. And the glitches are so funny that they’re almost half the show!” Every hair stood on Dash’s multicolored mane as they brought her ever closer to her imminent destruction. She, alone, knew how dangerous those robots could be. They were haunted, for Faust’s sake, and possessed with bloodlust! Or, at least, that was what her new guilty pleasure told her. “Relax,” Pinkie continued. “Nothing bad happens at Chuck E. Cheese’s unless they serve alcohol. This one doesn’t, but in California, they did, and it caused two bad bar fights in a row. So as long as this one doesn’t, you’re safe as gold confetti.” Neither Applejack nor Rainbow Dash bothered asking where California was, just chalking it up to the usual cavalcade of weird things Pinkie seemed to know. “Fine, fine, I admit it!” Rainbow yelled after several random facts. “It was Five Nights at Freddy’s. I wasn’t scared of anything before then, but then I marathoned it in one night and…” Dash shuddered from the memories, even as she’d continued trying it nights and nights after to get a better time. “I totally understand,” said Pinkie Pie. “I did Five Nights at Freddy’s, too. It all started when this frozen custard place started putting job ads around the school—“ “I don’t think that’s the same Freddy’s Dash is goin’ on about—“ “—and I thought, hey, cool, free ice cream! Or frozen custard, but anyway, I got a job at Freddy’s, but then they told me I could only get free custard every five nights! They wouldn’t even let me buy any until I got everything done on Fridays! So obviously, I quit after the first five nights. It…was…horrifying!” By the time Pinkie’s rambling had ended, the gates to hell had opened before Dash, and the demons were cheesy animatronic animals. Pinkie and Applejack gripped onto her hands as she helplessly watched their dance, knowing they could reach out and devour her at any moment. “Carl, I know you’re in here!” Rainbow Dash could hear Rarity shout as she bolted across the auditorium. “You know what you have to answer to!” Before that weirdness could go on any longer, however, someone else had already stormed into the room. A bolt of blue lightning that Dash could vaguely recognize as Sugarcoat sped across the stage, her body outlined with an ominous black aura. Before anyone could lift a finger to protest, the former Crystal Prep student tore an animatronic figure in two with her bare hands, screaming with an inhuman voice as she transformed. “You did this to me!” she boomed. “And you will pay for destroying Crystal Prep!” In the one place the seven thought they were safe, a she-demon had made her presence known once more, with one important difference. Applejack and Pinkie took each other’s hands, ponying up in a stream of light. Seeking their companions, who had been scattered throughout the arcade. Staring into the she-demon’s cold, animatronic eyes. Not even noticing that Rainbow could only cower under the table.
