The Ballad of Davvid Daggers
DISCLAIMER: This is basically a precision trollfic. It was written to annoy a friend of mine, and to amuse me. Read it if you want, but don’t come crying if you don’t understand some of the references (there are parts of this work that only I can really appreciate).
The Ballad of Davvid Daggers
In an undisclosed part of Ponyville, an over-accessorised young Lunar Supremacist sat in a dimly lit room, throwing darts from his steady cyan hoof. He narrowed his yellow eyes on the dartboard in front of him as he readied his final dart for launch.
Feeling confident, he flung the dart forward, releasing it from his grip without thinking too hard about how he had been gripping it with his hoof. The dart sailed true and landed right in the left eye of the face that adorned the board – his greatest enemy, Rarity the unicorn.
“Haha!” he exclaimed. “The fun has been doubled!”
Giggling with glee, he ran over to his standard issue Princess Luna plushie and used his hooves and a falsetto voice to make her congratulation him.
“Magnificently put,” said Luna plushie. “Thou even got the emphasis right!”
“Oh thank you, wise leader,” he replied.
The stallion – whose name was Davvid Daggers – then realised what he was doing and got a little weirded out. He promptly decided never to speak of it again.
Davvid patted the Luna plushie on the head before putting her back down on his coffee table. He then turned his attention to more important matters; his darts needed to be cleaned away.
The picture of Rarity that Davvid had covered his board with smirked at him, as if to say “Is that all you’ve got?” It was riddled with darts, but its expression remained cocky and brash. Davvid felt his temper rising as he plucked the darts out of the board with his mouth, one by one.
Davvid’s rivalry with Rarity went back a long way, but he was always vague about how it had begun.
Some said that he had dreamt of becoming the Element of Generosity himself as a young colt, and had tragically missed his opportunity to prove himself by trying one of Berry Punch’s hoofmade moonshine at Pinkie’s party the night before the Summer Sun Celebration.
Some said that his mother had almost sold him to pony traffickers in order to make enough money to buy a designer dress.
Still others say that he was left at the altar by a white unicorn mare with a purple mane. Opinions differed as to whether it was a wedding altar or a freaky Luna-worshipping cult altar.
Nopony knows for sure, except for Davvid, and he’s not telling.
***
Sweat poured from Davvid’s forehead, dampening his stylish bandana headband thing. He was engaged in the most intense game of chess he’d had in recent memory.
His opponent was an older pony – a fountain of experience who had been playing since long before Davvid was born. The battle was fierce, but Davvid was inching ahead – or so he thought.
“Checkmate, son.”
Davvid had made the mistake of locking his king in behind a line of pawns. A black knight had just moved in to threaten it, and the only other available spaces were marked by a second knight and a bishop, respectively. Davvid facehoofed at his short-sightedness.
“Good game,” he said quietly.
“Not really,” the older stallion replied. “You’re off your game today, boy. Seeya tomorrow.”
Davvid bade the stallion farewell as he rose from his chair and walked off in the direction of Ponyville Retirement Village. The stallion was right – Davvid was distracted. He needed to clear his head... needed to stop thinking about hate...
“Not having a good chess day, hmm?” asked a silky voice from behind Davvid’s chair.
Davvid spun around to face the speaker, but he didn’t really need to. He already knew who it was, and cursed fate for his bad luck.
Rarity raised an eyebrow at him, smiling slyly. She was the last pony Davvid felt like seeing just then.
“Chess is a sophisticated game – the game of kings, they say,” she said. “As a pony of discerning tastes, I believe I may do well to play a round or two.”
Davvid blinked.
“What say you, Daggers?” asked Rarity. “I’m sure a pony of your skill will have me beaten in no time at all. Why, your cutie mark is a chess piece! The idea that you could ever lose...”
Davvid felt a rage building up inside of him. “Fine! I’ll play you.”
Rarity smiled at this, and took her seat in front of the black pieces.
“What do the little ball-headed ones at the front do again?” Rarity asked, batting her eyes.
Davvid sighed. “They move forward one block at a time. Two blocks at the start. And they capture diagonally.”
“Right.”
This is going to be simple, thought Davvid, already practicing a victory song in his head.
***
It soon became evident that Rarity had been feigning ignorance of the game, and was hustling Davvid like a three-day-old foal. The ponies’ moves came thick and fast; Rarity’s with telekinetic precision, and Davvid’s matching them with carefully-measured hoof movements.
But Davvid’s early-game loses - caused by early-game over-confidence - soon saw him on the losing end of the game. Before he knew it, Rarity had whittled his options down to the moves of his king and two bishops.
Davvid swallowed nervously. Rarity still had a rook, a knight and her queen (in addition to her king) and was smiling smugly at him from across the table.
“Hey Davvid,” she said slyly.
“Yeah?” Davvid grunted.
“Look behind you! It’s Princess Luna!”
Davvid spun around in his seat, his wide eyes scanning the ground and sky. “Where? Where? I don’t... oh.”
Davvid stared daggers at Rarity, who merely smiled sweetly.
“Oh, sorry,” she said to him, “I guess it must have been a trick of the light. Um, by the way...”
“Yes?” Davvid asked, quite exasperated.
“I think you’re in checkmate... that is what it’s called, right?” Rarity smiled sweetly.
Davvid looked down at the board.
“WHAT?!” His head recoiled backwards, nearly toppling him. “How...?”
Davvid’s black king was being pinned by Rarity’s two white bishops.
“Oh well,” Rarity said, waving her hoof nonchalantly. “Better luck next time, Davvid.”
Daggers heard none of Rarity’s words, and didn’t even notice her get up and walk away. The soft clopping of her hooves was not enough to jar him from the deep depression he had entered – a depression brought on by Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome.
***
“*hic* I’m such a failure! What kind of *hic* pony name is *hic* Davvid anyway?”
Daggers lay on his back, resting in the soft grass next to the chessboard. Lying next to him was a large, mostly-empty bottle of apple cider, stolen from Applejack’s cellar earlier that week (Davvid figured she wouldn’t miss it).
In the deep, dark pit of Davvid’s drunken depression, a faint light suddenly shone. Davvid remembered something. Near the end of his ill-fated chess game with Rarity, he had been the player with two bishops left!
Davvid’s eyes went wide as he realised that he’d been playing white, not black! He grimaced in anger as he remembered Rarity’s cruel Princess Luna trick – she must have flipped the board around while he wasn’t looking!
Something had to be done about this cruel injustice, Davvid thought. I must make her pay for the-
“BLAAURGH!” Davvid’s thoughts were interrupted by the sudden and violent disposal of everything he’d eaten that day.
I’ll go sort out Rarity... just as soon as I sober up a bit.
***
CRASH! Wood flew everywhere as Davvid Daggers bucked down the door of Carousel Boutique. He spun around to face the building's interior, hatred burning in his eyes.
"Rarity!" he barked. "I have come to settle this once and for all."
For a moment, Davvid's ears where greeted only by silence. Then, all of a sudden, a slow record began to play. The tune was soulful, but restrained. Davvid hated it.
"I've been expecting you, darling," said Rarity, finally coming into view. "You're ever so predictable - to my great intellect, at least!"
"Celestia damnit!" Davvid shouted. "You're just so full of yourself!"
"I have the right to be," Rarity responded, admiring her hoof. "I am rather amazing, after all."
"You won't be so amazing once I've painted your boutique with marshmallow stuffing!"
With his teeth, Davvid whipped out a dagger from a hidden compartment in his uniform and lunged at Rarity. Within seconds, he had her on the floor. Davvid gripped the knife tightly between his teeth, angling it at Rarity's throat. His angry yellow eyes met her shocked blue ones in an intense staring contest.
Rarity's eyes narrowed and Davvid felt an uncomfortable tightness around his forehead. It didn’t take long for him to deduce that Rarity had grabbed his headband with her magic, and was pulling it tight.
Rarity's eyes narrowed, and she smiled in that smug way that irritated Davvid to no end. Sweat poured from his forehead, and he could feel a headache coming on. He tightened his grip on the knife, and pulled his head back ever-so-slightly. He was about to plunge the knife into Rarity's neck when he noticed something about her that he'd overlooked before.
Rarity had recently had her mane touched up. It was coiffed to perfection, and shone with a purple brilliance.
Davvid really hated her mane. He hated it and he hated her and he hated her deep blue eyes and her seductive pout and her warm body and her silky coat and... and...
Rarity blinked. Multiple times. She was batting her eyes.
The dagger fell to the floor as the stallion and the mare kissed passionately, their hearts overflowing with mutual hate.
***
Sometime later, Davvid staggered into his house and collapsed in front of his standard-issue Ponynet interfacing device. He was confused and his loyalties were torn. He didn’t understand anything anymore.
After quickly updating his Ponynet site with a picture of him eating a delicious sandwich, he sat and stared at his interface’s screen for a moment, before it flashed obnoxiously to alert him of a new notification on Muzzlebook.
Clicking the notification took him to Rarity’s page, where he noticed an update to her relationship status:
In a caliginous relationship with Davvid Daggers
Davvid sat at his terminal feeling even more confused than he had felt before. He stared at his screen for a while, but soon realised that doing so would not provide the answers he sought. It did, however provide snarky comments from his trollpony friends.
Davvid and Rarity sitting in a tree
S-T-A-B-B-I-N-G
First comes hate, then comes love
Then comes a foal and two shallow graves
He didn’t read the rest of the comment. Sighing, he reached into a hidden pocket in his uniform and pulled out a folded slip of paper. He smoothed it out, and blushed slightly at lipstick mark it bore in its open state.
The paper read: “Call me, you filthy earth pony. I hate your sexy flank. Rarity.”
Davvid took a long, cold shower.
A NOTE: “Caliginous relationship” is a reference to troll romance in Homestuck – it basically amounts to the trope “Foe Yay”. In a deleted scene, Daggers had a long Pesterchum conversation with Karkat. My trollfics are terribly self-indulgent.
