Dice rattled in my hooves, the sound driving me crazy as I felt the odd marks of the three dice bump into my frogs. I could feel myself hesitating, taking longer to shake the dice than I should. My mouth was dry. Anxiety filled me. My breath shortened as I stared at my bet, all in, on top of the beautiful crown symbol on the game mat.
As I let go of the dice my breath caught. My heart skipped a beat while I stared, moving my head, and followed the arc of the dice across the craps table. All my money, chips that I’d saved up for months to be able to make this bet, were placed on the upper middle of the mat. My brain flushed with happiness every moment that I saw a crown staring at the top face of a die tumbling across the table.
The green of the mat seemed to blur as the dice started to slow to a stop, and I clenched my eyes. I couldn’t watch it, I couldn’t try and hope that I would win. Not against my mother. My mother, the Overmare. Officially the luckiest person in the entire stable. She had remained undefeated for years in the public eye, and I’d bet my future that I could win against her.
The silence became overwhelming, and finally I couldn’t keep my eyes closed any longer. The first thing I saw was my mother’s Ebony fur, her bright grey mane, as I Stared into my face. She was soft, a smile making me feel a lot less worried, as I drew my eyes down to the game board. And, within seconds, I was jumping for joy, as three beautiful crowns stared right back up at me.
It wasn’t my first win, far from it, but it was the most important of my life until that point. “I knew you could do it son. I guess we have the next overstalion on our hooves.” My mom said, moving over and kissing me on my nose. “We’re going to have to hold a big party for you. You can be sure of it.”
From there she walked over to the overmare vault, a small walk in safe built into the wall of the room. I was in my mother’s gambling hall, the personal games place of every overstallion and overmare that had run this stable. My chips were in small numbers, 10 or 100 bits, but when she walked back to me she handed me only a couple chips. The first was the largest denomination we had, a thousand bit chip, orange in color.
That night was kind to me, drifting off to sleep on my soft silk sheets. I slept well, dreaming only of the clattering of dice and the falling of chips. I had become one of the richest ponies in the stable, all in one the fall of a single set of dice. To keep this power, well, I just had to hope and pray would be a lady to me.
The next morning I still had to go to school. As I slowly opened my eyes, I realised the importance of what had just happened. As I glanced over steel walls, clad in rich decorations, I continued to imagine what could have happened. How much could have gone wrong, how easily could I have lost my bits within seconds?
As I trotted to school, a small spring in my step, I healed my satchul over my shoulder. The pile of chips, my extra winnings, rattled in their container at my hip. They were loud compared to the previous day, because I’d traded up for such a high chip. But as I walked, I couldn’t help but be notice by my closest friend.
“Dice! My man!” Came the scratchy voice of the son of the head of security. They were sportsmen, or at least men of parlar games,. His muted olive drab fur rustled in the breeze made by his wings as he reached over and hugged me close to him. “What’s Knocking?”
“Hey Stabscotch. The new uniform is banging.” It wasn’t a lie, he was wearing the brand new uniform of a member of security. “I guess you made your old man see what you’ve got? Seems you won your entry.” I smiled to him, patting him on the back.
“Celestia fuck, you have your cutie mark man, did you even notice?” He grinned and hugged me close again. “The cutie mark fits the name, but man, Loaded Dice? Your mom have a deathwish or something on you? We both know your cool but it sounds like your a cheat.” He wasn’t wrong, that’s why most ponies just knew me as L.D.
“Whatever man, let’s get to class, Queen’s waiting for us.” Queenie was my other closest friend, a unicorn mare, and kind of clumsy. She was one of the smartest ponies in the stable, the smartest in our class. When we walked in we smiled and waved, and I gestured at my cutie mark, which made her stare a little bit. I couldn’t help but blush with a filly staring at my ass like that, but it was a bit silly.
Class was long, as the teacher talked about the Equestrian Air Force. It was boring, despite how interesting the topic was. Beside me Stabscotch was practicing his talent, spreading his feathers and playing with a small switchblade knife. Each time he stabbed a small mark was left in his desk, but his feathers were cut.
I couldn’t really be certain how long it had been, but after some time a light in the middle of the seiling began to flash as the entire stable went into red alert. This had not happened within my life, nothing had happened, and none of the students knew what to do. Professor Go yelled at us to walk single file to our homes. With a glance between us, me and my friends had a very different idea.
Me and Queen ran side by side as we moved, while Stab flew ahead and made sure we could bob through the panicking crowd. The shops and cashouts were shutting down, as we ran through the central area to where we could tell the hubbub was coming from. The entrance, the loud sound of the stable door creaking open.
“I know you said that these ponies determine everything with games, but this is ridiculous.” Came a voice over the clattering sound of the door. “This place doesn’t even have a real security system, it’s just a word-search puzzle, ike that’s what hacking is? It’s insane.”
“Whatever.” Came another voice, louder, gruffer. “Just as long as it’s open, you all know the plan.” As the door opened we could see the source of this voice first. He was a tall stallion, with grey fur and deep purple hair. It was shaved from one side where an odd pattern appeared in his fur, maybe a tattoo? Or circuitry?
Rustling alerted me to who else had appeared behind us, Abandonware and D-Buff. They were friends of mine, but only through our parents and the executive privileges we had. At the front, all of our parents had apparently arrived. My mother stood at the head, as the office of the overmare afforded her that privilege.
“Now boys.” She said, seductively walking a little closer to the intruders. “You folk don’t plan on making us resort to violence right? There isn’t any need for that, we can settle whatever this is peacefully. I assure you.” The purple-haired stallion laughed, seemingly amused by my mother somehow.
His mane was shaved short to one side, revealing a parturn of something over his left ear. It was some sort of tattoo, or maybe something under his skin, hard to tell. “I know of your ways ma’am. I know that you determine things through games. And I’m here to take this stable from you, miss overmare.” His eyes twinkled, before clearly going down to the small mark on her uniform that showed she was overmare. It was a badge, easily exchanged instead of sewn in.
My mother was taken aback, staring at him. “Surely you know then that we can’t just accept any sort of game, equal terms must be provided. There’s surely nothing you have that we would risk the whole stable for…” My mother said, trailing off before trying to return to speaking authoritatively. “I recommend you just leave, we have nothing for you. And you certainly don’t have anything we might want.”
Bar shoved my mother aside, making her eep, while pulling out some silver tipped darts from underneath his stable security uniform. “Who are you, where did you get that pip-buck?” He asked, pointing out the hoof of the purple stallion. This was the first time anyone had noticed the fact that he was wearing a pip-buck, one that clearly was marked as a stable 21 scout model, rather than the decorated models we had for personal use.
“I’m the Gambler, I’m the one that knows.” The leader said, smiling softly. “I met one of your scouts, years ago. He was a friendly fellow, asked me to share a beer with him while he rested at the bar. The was a drunk that stallion, and dead fucking broke, he seemed to have an… addictive personality. I ended up getting this because he gave it to me, after losing in a game of pool.” He smiled softly, as if actually recalling a good memory. “Poor fool.”
As he said that, I noticed a new figure moving of the front of the crowd. It was Go, along with the head of stable affairs. The stable affairs officer was a severe pony, rather stronger willed than anyone else in the stable. She was Debuff’s mom. “Well, I hear you want to take our stable? Well what’s your colateral. I’m hope my compatriots haven't given you any ideas. You need to provide some capital to make it happen.” She looked rather smug at this.
“Oh, I’m sure it must have been mentioned once or twice.” The Gambler said, smiling and staring deep into her eyes. “How does a fully functioning auto-doc sound? From what I heard, yours broke a good half-century ago.” He looked pointedly at another mare, the stable head of medicine. “I’ll throw in a good… five thousand caps, wasteland currency I’m sure you know, to sweeten the deal.”
“W-we can’t just accept that, there’s no way that could possibly be fair.” My mother stammered, staring at him with judging eyes. But, once she looked back at the doctor, she knew just how important it would become. “I mean, how could we possibly deal with losing our stable? Even if we do need your ante.”
The Gambler grinned, looking somewhat sinister as he stepped forward and got into my mother’s face. It was all I could do to not rush him, but my small body wouldn’t be a match for him, for sure. “Don’t be so sure. If you lose I hold no intention to kick you out, just to make you work. This community will experience prosperity, and only at the cost of giving up your frivolous lifestyle.”
My mother, it seemed, was exacerbated. She placed her for-hoof to her face as she thought, trying to think of some excuse. I could see our ‘guest’ watch it, staring at the pip-buck on it. It was the same as the rest, except for a small feature, an attachment shoved into it’s attachment slot. That was the role of overstallion, right there. “Fine. You want to play a game with me? You can. But you can’t take the entire stable over with just one game, my fellows will resist you if you cause too much trouble for us.”
“Don’t worry, I somewhat expected that, but I don’t need to take control of anything but the head.” He said, before going to sit at a booth with my mother. “Now, I figure we can do this pretty easily if we just find a simple game we both know. I don’t suppose you know caravan?”
Time moved as our impending doom drew near, and the Gambler’s friends seemed to make themselves at home. They raided our bar, pulling out little metal bottle caps to pay. The barmare wanted to argue, but with the guns they had, she didn’t want to cause a fuss. The game was eventually decided to be a game of Craps, played in the biggest hall of the Stable 21 Cassino. It was large, with tables all around, and the center included a raised area where high roller folks could eat at a diner.
There was a platform placed in the middle of the diner area, large enough to hold a wide variety of games. I knew that it could be used for prize fights and even tournaments of some sorts. The craps table had been raised on it, with two large spaces around it for each of them. Behind them were their pots, each with 10,000 bits worth of chips next to them, along with their respective prizes set behind them. My mother’s Overmare module, and the Gambler’s auto-doc placed with a small chip that that was in their pot that they could exchange for an extra 20 k each.
Small Black and White screens were built into our tables, with little plastic buttons. Some of them would allow you to watch specific people above, but the lower set of buttons were set aside exclusively for betting. You would put chips in the bank before sitting down, and bet them alongside the ponies above. It was an easy way to play along and make bits doing it. The dealers beside the two shooters above would be placing bets by proxy for poneis below.
The gambler placed 500 bits on my mother’s no-pass bar as he stood at the standard old-equestrian table. It was a safe enough bet. They would be going until one went bankrupt, or for five rounds. The clatter of dice was deafoning over the speakers of the high roller’s area, making everyone shudder as they knew exactly how crucial this was. My mother made her bets easily enough, and everyone around won what they needed. That was her round up, having made a tidy profit with a roll of nine. The gambler had lost some, putting him down to 11,500 bits while my mom was at 15k clean, it wasn’t looking great for him.
The Gambler shrugged, acting calm and collected, either like a shark or genuine rube. He placed his bets and half the ponies at the bar bet on him to loose. It wasn’t large, but he won the bet, moving his bits up to 14,500 bits. The next round moved just as quickly. My mother moved up to 20k and the Gambler lost another 500 on her to loose. He bet high and lost 5k on himself, moving down to 9k again. The Third and fourth rounds left the Gambler pretty much the same, only winning once, and having about 5k at the end with my mother winning almost every round.
That all changed in an instant when the last round came around. My mother was 30k, never breaking out her little black chip. The gambler on the other hoof had nothing to bet with but the 5k on the table and the auto-doc behind him, cashing in the chip for that clean twenty thousand. He started to, seemingly wildly, place bets all over his side of the table. He bet on a point of 2, a simple but low chance bet. But then he placed 10,000 on the field, a place where it would pay double if the next roll was 2. And he placed the other 10k on a 30-1 snake eyes bet that would pay out big but had almost no chance to win.
Everyone at the tables bet on it, me and my friends alike. We all placed bets with all our chips for him to lose big. The chips on the other bars, the places that would be where he lost, were covered. But we didn’t notice how much his companions were grinning, or how much they bet on the exact same things he did.
Amazingly, with a single flourish of his hoof the dice tumbled across the table and landed exactly snake eyes. The crowd drew in a gasp, we’d all called for a fail, but the uproar was deafening as time drew on. Every thing that he’d predicted had come true, and he’d won 60k or so, it was impossible to count as all of my own chips slowly went into the banker’s box. And that was it. The game was over, with the entirety of my stable in an uproar, and the stable in the hooves of the gambler.
21’s inhabitants waited with bated breath to hear exactly what he planned to do with it. “My dear citizens of stable 21, I’d like to welcome you into the Trouble Dogs.” He grinned his teeth looking almost sharp in the light of the small screens. “You are all going to work for your Bits now, but don’t worry, I plan on making sure 21 stays a place of luxury. You all can bet on it, this place is going to be better than tenpony in just a couple years.”
I stood up on my table, I couldn’t help myself as my knees shook, but I raised my voice. “Gambler. I challenge you. I will bet everything I have against my stable to win it back.” I said, staring at him. My friends tried to drag me down, but I had to attempt this. This was my home, my stable, and my place to win and control.
“Sorry son.” He said in response, walking over to the railing. “But I’m afraid you don’t have enough Bits or Caps. There’s a minimum wager for a bet like that, I’m sure you know, and you just lost everything.” He looked up at the ponies around me. “But don’t worry folks, I won’t punish the boy. I’m a good pony, there are hardened poneis out there that would sooner kill this child than look at him.” He leaned over, to whisper in my ear. “If your going to play the game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right.”
“How are we supposed to fucking deal with this?” Queen’s Gambit asked, snapping from her usual calm. The five of us were sitting around a table in the corner of the library, the closest there was to hiding in our very open Stable. “Our home’s being taken from us and there’s no way for us to save it.” Stab was angrily playing with his knife next to her, refusing to speak in anything but grunts for the time being.
“Calm down.” Abandon said, sighing. Her wings were spread, sitting directly across from Stab beside Debuff. Debuff was taking his time in an odd way, spreading papers across the table to organise a jumbled mind. “Stab, get ahold of yourself. Both of you. We can make this work.” she said, turning and looking into my eyes.
Stab started to breath, and stared angrily at all of us. “We have to fight. Kill the bastards. This is our home, our place, we can’t let them take it over. They could make us slaves, they could torture us, we don’t know what they want.” I nodded, somehow convinced that what he was saying wasn’t complete nonsense. I felt like it wasn’t unreasonable.
“This isn’t our way, we can’t fight them.” Queen’s Gambit said, sighing and sitting back. “Besides, their stronger than us, they can do things that we don’t understand.” She placed her hoof on the table and moved a small pawn across it, scooting it towards me. “It’s a Zugzwang, a forced move, an unwinnable scenario where whatever we do will make it worse.”
“It isn’t unwinnable!” I yelled, slamming my hoof on the table. “Even if we can’t win now, we can win later… We just need to get the Bits, the Chips the… Caps to challenge our right for the stable again.” I sighed, leaning down and slumping into my chair. “But with what he’s stated the chip bet is already up, I wouldn’t want to try and challenge with less than 50k bits. At least.”
Debuff raised his head. “LD. I may have an idea.” He said, smiling with a light grin. “If we can’t win now, we just have to try again.” He spread a map out on the table, it was old, a printout of something from a holo disc or tape. “This is a map of the old equestria cities, I’ve made marks from all the things that scouts have sent back, but we can’t be sure what of it is actually out there.”
I looked at the map with hope. “Here.” I pointed my hoof to the north of our city. “We’ll go here, north to San Palomino.” I grinned, staring at it. “It’s a city, there have to be bits to be made out there. And where there are bits, there are losers willing to give them away.” My grin spread across my face, as I stared at my friends.
“We’ll All be adults once LD gets his cutemitzvah, so we’ll leave at dawn that day.” Queenie said, smiling at us as a plan formulated in her little earth pony brain. It was then when we heard a very loud cough, drawing our attention to outside of our alcove, where another pony was. It was hoof-bandage, one of the ponies who was in our class, a little bit older than me. She seemed to have an odd expression on her face.
“So you wanna leave this junk place and come back heroes? Count me the fuck in.” She was the daughter of the head of medical. We never really hung out, just passed by each other in that way that you do when you know there are only ten or twelve other ponies around your age. I’ve been wanting a fight for ten damned years, don’t think ya’ll gonna leave me out for no fucking reason.”
It was agreed, we all were going to leave at dawn on the day of my party. picked apart. It took days for the party to become planned and ready, as everything was delayed by the new ponies. The entire stable was indexed, and the entire population of the stable had to move down into the maintenance rooms, lower rooms that few had used before this point.
Outside the stable Gambler’s gang set up in the community above. Once there were two cities in the area. On one side of the stable an settlement had been built in Mareno Valey. On the other was the larger city, Riverside… The dogs took it over and made it their home away from home.
Our stable was small, the population not being large to begin with and dwindling down as time went on. It wasn’t hard for all of us to move into the maintenance tunnels and to still maintain a modicum of luxury, it was still bedded and furnished like any of the suites upstairs. A few ponies decided to leave, just like we did.. My party finally arrived three days after it was supposed to, three days after the invasion of our stable by those lowlifes.
“My fellow… Citizens of this stable.” Came the voice of my mom, no longer the overmare but still an acting liaison director. “We are here to have fun and give my son a party he deserves. Food is being served, including a couple items off the new… wasteland menu. Don’t worry about anything at all, we all know these are trying times, but if we can spend this time in celebration we can do anything.”
However much I wanted to have that celebration, that was the only part of my Cutemitzva I ever saw. The six of us, all of us foals, snuck our way out of the stable past the low security guards. The door was open, there was nothing stopping the difference between the stable and the outside world. It was easy for us to walk through to the mouth of a cave and exit it.
The light outside was blinding, the sunlight unnatural to my eyes. Four of us raised our hooves to our eyes, covering them as we adjusted to the outside world and the flash of white. The other two were content using their wings, the feather brains, to easily cover their faces. It took a few seconds for the light to dim as we saw the world outside.
It was a ruined cityscape, and easy to see. It wasn’t near anything at the time, with broken buildings set around it, but nearby it was easy to hear the noise and bustle of the two settlements around. Old and new, the scape of the wasteland, as my hooves dug into the dirt and earth beneath me. My eyes wandered up to the sky as I continued to try and examine everything, as I saw an odd patch of blue through a thin cloud cover.
As i looked around I almost didn’t notice the white of my EFS against the bright light behind it. In the corner of my eye a little message appeared, telling me only four words. Quest Activated: Friendly Coup. I wasn’t bothered, and turned down to examine my pip-buck. There on my screen I turned the knob to activate the radio and listen to a peppy song as I nodded to my friends and we moved out into the wasteland.
Footnote!
Loaded Dice
S - 4
P - 6
E - 4
I - 8
A - 8
L - 10
Trait Identified: Luck be a Lady - Luck is always a lady to you, never quite running out. You start with max luck and you can increase it beyond max. However, Cybernetics seem to work funny around you, so you can’t get implants. Your name might also get you in trouble, if you don’t change it.
