The Gambit

by PoniWryter

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Tragedy, Profanity, Slice of Life, Death
Length: 2998

Welcome to the world of chances, percentages, the luck of the draw. Name’s Card Counter, kid. Yours?

This is the world of probability, kid. This is the world of chances, percentages, the luck of the draw. Name’s Card Counter - though, folks call me the Rat. Don’t mind ‘em.

Let’s see what’cha got.

First place in the Quills & Sofas Speedwriting Hot off the Press contest - the prompt was "Roll the Dice".

Thanks to Silent Whisper, Vis-A-Viscera, and Shaslan for editing! Pre-read before publishing by some of my inspirations, supporters, and true, true friends on the Q&SS team: The Legendary Bill Cipher, Snow Quill, Nailah, RubyDubious, HapHazred, KrazyTheFox, and Speccer.

Published 2020-08-05 21:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2020-08-05 21:00:00 UTC

The Gambit

Saw a young little filly walk out yesterday, accompanied by the stallion I tagged for the night. She was holdin’ a doll, and they were walkin’ back home from that big ol’ Las Pegasus Casino. Daddy says, “Baby girl, I’ll get you everything you want after today. No more gambling, okay?” And they smiled as they trotted down the street.

Gamblers.

I don't like ’em.

Most ponies won’t lean on luck when they do things. Most ponies, after all, ain’t crazy. Most ponies like to know they're safe and sound. They like security. Gamblers, though? Gamblers risk it all. They put it all on the line, just yearnin’ for the little more, the little gain they wanna get. Scratchin’ that itch.

Then, they crash and burn, and they leave penniless. Another one in the bag, says the casino. These big shot buildings and hotels — they don’t care about’cha. They just want ya bits.

Most gamblers I meet stop gamblin' within a month. I like to say I'm pretty proud of that.

After all, why put your life savings on the back of the world's most fundamental force?

You see, I think life is like a deck o’ cards. You got no idea what'cha gonna draw next — all you can do is play, or fold. One in a hundred chance you form a little brain clot that'll end up with you dead, frothin’ on the floor from an aneurysm. One in twenty chance your body’s own limiters fail you; say hello to cancer.

That ol’ tree branch that fell on your patio? Be a little unlucky, and you'd be the next textbook example on why we make sure trees don't rot.

So when the odds are five-to-one your dice roll screws you over hard, let me tell ya somethin’ — you DON’T continue playin’.

I crashed that old fella’s slot machine pretty bad — made ‘em scrape by the skin of his teeth. Five bits. He knew it was all over, then. So he put those last five in, thinkin’, “this is it” or some other bullcrap like that.

I gave him forty bits back. Enough to feed for another week or so. Hope he sees the writing on the wall: don’t come back, or lose it all.

Judgin’ from the little smile on his face and the young’un’s doll? He ain’t comin’ back. Good.

This is the world of probability, kid. This is the world of chances, percentages, the luck of the draw. Name’s Card Counter — though, folks call me the Rat. Don’t mind ’em.

Let’s see what’cha got.

Don’t listen to the freaks that follow this thing called ‘determinism’. They’ll preach ya one thing, and one thing only: fate. Fate is a cruel, fickle mistress, they say. Ain’t no point in fightin’ fate. No such thing as free will, yadda yadda, this that — just let life carry you away, and hope for the best. Yeah?

Lesson number one: you meet someone like that, buck ’em.

Lesson number two: they’re wrong, and I’ma teach you why.

The folks up at Canterlot and Manehattan call it “chaos theory”. Now, last time I stepped into school was twenty-five years ago, so I sure as hell can’t teach ya that new stuff. But what I can tell ya is that it’s true. Life ain’t no railroad — we ain’t goin’ straight. No such thing as fate. Always a little bit of chance in everything. That’s fundamental. That’s nature at its finest. Can’t fight the power of luck.

What we can do, though, is fight fire with fire. Manipulate a fundamental with… another fundamental.

Change probability with magic — that’s where I come in.

Hey. You laughin’ right now, kid? Don’t look at me like that. This ain’t easy. Everyone thinks that ol’ Card Counter’s got a few magic tricks up his sleeve. “How’d he tell what cards I’m holdin’?!” they ask. “How the hell does he roll doubles three times in a row, all the time?” Well, for one, they’re all dumb — can’t hold cards to save a life. Learn to hide ‘em better. Also, I’m great at countin’ cards, if my name didn’t give that away.

But two? It’s magic — complex, convoluted, deep magic.

The spell matrices are complicated. The more you go, the more they hurt. They go deep, they go hard, and they’ll take a toll on your body if ya ain’t ready. Most unicorns — aside from those mathematicians, I’d say — ain’t used to usin’ magic to calculate things. It’s sensory overload, they say. Most ponies can’t handle that strength. Go insane with it, if they try too hard. Turn into a nutjob. Have their brains fried by all the numbers flowin’ in. You have to be trainin’ real hard to even learn how to fix a dice roll.

That’s why yer here, with me. And that’s why we ain’t doing the real deal first. Hell naw. I’d be impressed if you picked up the basics in a month. No one has ever done that before.

…Well, that’s also ‘cause I don’t usually teach a lotta kids out here to play with the roll.

Anyway.

You don’t start by learnin’ how to fix the dice. That’s ‘cause you don’t know just how many positions the dice can be fixed. Same thing with the more complex things — bullet trajectories, wind paths, airflow, fluid dynamics. Before ya go ahead and toy with these things, ya gotta learn which elements of chance are in play right now. Random impact variables. Probability densities. Wave functions.

A lot of it, not gonna lie, is imagination. But that’s important, too — being able to see where the dice is gonna fall. What card is gonna come out. Where the bullet lands. The real reason most probability spells fail is because ponies can’t imagine how things can land. You don’t need to know it all — you just need to make sure you’re coverin’ most of it. More on that later, though.

Why dice? Easiest thing you can start with. Here’s the three spells you’ll need: advanced mental imagin’, mental partitionin’, and parallel sensory processin’.

You’re fresh outta school, no? Twilight’s School for Gifted Unicorns, that right? Yeah. You can do it, then. It should be small fry for a smart young’un like you.

And if it ain’t workin’ out, then… no problem. I’ll just toss ya out and get a new apprentice. Ya got a month. Let’s begin.

Listen to the sound of the dice rollin’. Feel it. Then, cast the spell. Put all your thoughts into the matrix. Two ways to work it, both real situational: either you think of exactly what you do want to happen, or you think of everythin’ that you don’t wanna watch, and then channel that into the spell.

Dice — second method. Slot machines — first method.

Dice is real easily second, cuz’ ya ain’t gonna know how the thing rolls. All ya can do is think of all the five sides ya’ don’t want rolled, then roll. Slots is first, ‘cause it’s a machine. Limited chances, limited random variables. All ya gotta do is… twist a little bit of the gears in there. Add a chaos element. Make it work.

There you go. Good work. See? Rolled a six, three times in a row.

Aw, you’re real proud, aintcha? So am I. Now try again.

…What’s the worst luck I’ve ever seen?

Shucks. Hard choice. Ain’t sure if I can tell ya a good one.

Huh. Maybe this one, then:

Had a young little filly with a lotta derring-do play with her bow. ’Twas a unicorn, and she had… a decent amount of magical strength. She liked to shoot arrows — at everything. Tree, rock, grass, leaves? You name it, she’d shoot it.

One day, little filly gets the bright idea to shoot down some birds with it. One — that’s cruel, and that’s sick. We ain’t griffins, we don’t need to be huntin’ birds. Two, though — little filly had a brand new fiberglass arrow shaft. Maximum accuracy, but you know what? When they fall down, they go fast. And they’re strong. She didn’t know that. Neither did I — nor anyone else, for that matter. Heck, when was the last time I touched a bow? Uh, never.

Filly pulls her compound bow up. Aims at an innocent little birdy, and… release. It’s a miss.

She didn’t think that shot through, though. Wind picked up right at that moment. In the wrong direction. One second she sees it go up, the next, it’s fallin’ down really, really quickly. I reckon all she saw was a dark bolt in her vision speedin’ straight at her.

The arrow pierces through her skull, straight through bone, horn, and brain, and right then and there, she dies.

Terrified?

Hah. Nah, I’m just messin’ wit’cha.

Back then, I didn’t know how to play with turbulence as well as I do now. But I tried. I imagined the wind pickin’ up even harder, blowin’ the arrow aside and makin’ it fall side-first into the ground. I tried. I tried real hard.

The problem with not understandin’ what was gonna happen? You risk unexpected results. Arrow flew sideways, yeah, but not in the way I thought. Slash. Shot straight through her right ear, and hit the ground with a big chunk’a flesh just… stickin’ there.

Girl survived. Called her parents, got her to the hospital. Nasty scar, though.

That’s how it goes sometimes. And, yeah, ya can’t really do much in that kinda situation. You pick up as you go along, you learn how things work as you use this magic and find out that, well, things don’t always happen the way ya want it to. You don’t know what’s gonna happen? All you can do is rely on what ya do know. We’re playin’ with luck, ya see, and Lady Luck don’t like her little kids tamperin’ her sweet, fine-tuned machine. So things can go real wrong, real fast — all you can do is trust in what ya can change.

For beginners- actually, nah. For me, too. It’s less ‘probability manipulation’, as they say. It’s more… uh, autonomy extension. Somethin’ like that. We ain’t changin’ how things work, we’re just changin’ how much we can change things, with different spells and the like. Get pretty good at it, though… you become a master of chance.

The dice goin’ well? Good. That took a while — almost thought ya couldn’t do it. Heh. Trust.

The bullet drop is probably the only thing ya can change when it comes to range. Makes it a whole lot easier to perform this spell when you’re outta sight.

Don’t be nervous, kid! I’m not tryin’a shoot ya. What, you think I’m gonna kill my own apprentice or somethin’? Shucks.

Heh.

Ya remind me of somepony I used to know. She never touched the bullet. She touched everything else, though. Couldn’t shoot her no matter what — plates, steel walls, concrete. You name it, she moved it. Also was really good at movin’, swervin’ and weavin’, using telekinetics, which made it even more difficult for me to get a shot in.

That’s it. You’re doin’ real fine, kid. Keep it up.

…Who was I talkin’ about?

Ah. It’s a long story.

Whinniepeg. Cobalt University of Whinniepeg. That’s where I come from. Home city, actually. Never left. Not for a long, long time.

Had a friend there. She, uh- she’s the one who did all this spell matrix creation sorta deal. She had a real eye for imaginin’ what went wrong. Was a real good planner, and all that. Contingencies, backups, Plan Bs and Plan Cs — all her forte. Probably one of the greatest magicians to ever grace this land.

We were young, then. I was fresh outta boarding school — expensive, sure, but a hell of a good time. Worth it, too. Her, though? Family came from way over in the East. Poor family — mostly rock cultivars, mineral growth, and the occasional tree farm. You get how it is. Gotta grow whatever ya can if ya wanna live out there. She fought hard — tooth and nail, broke probably every other bone in her body. Yeah. She was a fighter, that’s for sure.

…She dead? Nah. She’s… she’s still around. Somewhere. I ain’t gonna bother lookin’ for her, though. We went our separate ways for good reason.

…Why?

I wanted to make the world a better place — figure out how to change the lives of ponies everywhere by playin’ with chance. We tested it out, too. Past life and all, ya see. Every time we passed by someone who could do with a little bit o’ luck, we helped out. Silently. Didn’t hurt, though. Make the world a better place, am I right?

Hey, I mean — I can’t save everyone. Nah. Ain’t… ain’t that good yet. But it’s the little things, ya know. The little good things… maybe you can help out like that, too. Ponies, I mean. Helpin’ other folks — like all those gamblers out on the Strip.

But… yeah. I thought it was great, but…

Look, I ain’t feelin’ like this story right now, alright? Get back to preppin’. Ya still got lots to learn.

Anyway, good work with the bullet drop. Projectile trajectories, next. Let me see if ya can survive a full salvo of lead aiming straight at yer’ face. No limits — use whatever technique you know.

Ready?

Hey, what did I say about knockin’? Ya ain’t supposed to be here. Training’s over for the day, kid. You did really well, better than anyone I’d ever seen — now piss off.

-You were lookin’ for me?

Yeah. I’m drinkin’.

So?

Ya tryin’a tell me to quit it?

Oh, I can’t die now, can I? You know how many ponies out there who ain’t got the luck to survive? Stray bullet, stray carriage, starvation, landslide, all that. Life ain’t fair — never was, kid. All we do is play with fate. But I can’t change it. Never been able to. I can fix dice, sure — you roll a dice in front of my eyes and I can bet your grandma’s soul it’s gonna land on a six. Every. Time.

But… some things, I can’t change.

20, Month of the Sun.

Why do you think I skip out on the Solstice? It ain’t ‘cause I hate Princess Twilight.

A long time past. Long, long time ago.

I lost my wife that day.

Cancer. Stage four. She was pregnant with our kid, too. A little chance she could’ve survived, but the odds of hemorrhagic shock were too high. Far too high. And, back then, I wasn’t the stallion with the medical knowledge. That was all my best friend.

I did whatever I could. I… I played with a lot of ponies’ lives. Shuffled doctors around. Got a lot of people into a lot of places — kicked a lot of people out, too. Screwed with every single piece of probability I could to get her to survive. Medicine? Fast track that. Accounting accidents? Happened all the time with me around.

Cast the spell on her own body, because she was too weak to do it herself. Studied all I could about blood flow and the circulatory system, and tried to minimize her pain. Stop her from dyin’, if I could.

Couldn’t save them in the end. Couldn’t.

…No.

It’s all karma. In the end, life comes back to bite you in the flank.

Lady Luck? Lady Luck hates it when we tinker with her toys. You wanna know what we were doin’? We were gettin’ filthy rich, goin’ into casinos. Toying with all the machines. We went wild, making sure we had a great life. Didn’t matter what. Everything’s chance, kiddo. Everything. And we took that to heart. We went insane with power, knowing that no matter what, every dice roll that life gave would always — always — roll in our favor.

She died a painless death that morning. The doctors pronounced her dead just as the sun rose. Summer Sun Celebration.

I was cryin’ by her deathbed. Didn’t have a chance to go see the festival.

That’s why I’m here, right now. Just… tryin’a pay it back, I guess.

Thanks, kid. That’s sweet.

You got a ticket?

…Ah.

I haven’t seen the fairgrounds in a while.

You hunted down a long lost figure of myth — one who was hanging by a thread, drinkin’, boozin’ around, lost in life. You wanted to learn his magic — my magic. You said you were “looking to catalogue all the lost methods and techniques” of magic, since time immemorial.

Yeah? I get that right? Too… showboaty, huh?

Well. Congratulations, girl. You did it.

I think… at this point? You’re better at magical probabilities than I am.

…

Look, kid.

This was my life’s work. This was her life’s work, too.

I’m glad you’re doing this. If not for me… maybe for her.

You know, I never thought I’d be teachin’ the Princess’ protege my old, lifelong work. You sure as hell really did dig me up from the middle of nowhere. How long did it take ya to find me again?

Whatever. Kid, I’m proud of you.

This… power. I used it for wrong. And, in the end, in the places where it mattered the most… it didn’t do anything for me. I could roll dice an infinite number of times, but… wasn’t strong enough, in the end.

Use this for good, yeah?

Love you too, kid.

No? I’ll be here. You can always visit ol’ Card Counter, anytime.

Yeah, sure. I’ll be sure to send you a letter.

See ya, Luster.

Author's Note

Thank you to all my readers! Your support is awesome!
Now, for a quick question: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/912479/a-quick-question-to-readers-story-samples