Twilight Sparkle and the Element of Scarcity

by TheDriderPony

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Shining Armor, Quibble Pants, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 5710

It's important to get your shopping done ahead of time before all the stores sell out and you're forced into an absurd competition against other late shoppers. She really should have bought via mail order.

There's a hot new toy craze in Canterlot, and young Twilight Sparkle is determined to get ahold of one to make her BBBFF's Hearth's Warming absolutely perfect.

This should have been a simple and straightforward quest, except for two things: that she waited until the last minute to do her shopping, and the intervention of a disagreeable stallion who'd rather hoard the toys to himself.

Special thanks to Yoshikage Kira for help with lore consulting and pre-reading.

Written for IgnisKitsune for Jinglemas 2022

Published 2022-12-26 17:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2022-12-26 17:30:01 UTC

All That Glitters

The Card Shark Gaming Emporium was not the sort of shop Twilight Sparkle often found herself visiting. In fact, being a nine-year-old filly from a reasonably upper class family, she was the living antithesis to their target demographic.

Probably. 'Antithesis' had been the subject of her Word-a-Day calendar a week and a half back and she was pretty sure this was the right context for it.

The shop stood out among the brightly decorated streets of Canterlot's main shopping district for the sheer fact that it was barely decorated. While the stores on either side boasted explosions of red and green tinsel, festive murals in the display windows, and enough candy canes to give a whole school tooth decay, the Card Shark's one concession to the Hearth's Warming spirit was a somewhat worn wreath on the door and a chalk sign declaring that Clockwork: The Assembling cards were half off for the holiday season.

Undeterred, she pushed her way through the somewhat stubborn door and entered the belly of the beast.

The smell hit her first.

It charged through her nostrils and straight to her brain, a startling combination of old sweat, paper, and drying paint. Like someone had hosted a wrestling tournament in a bookshop while the walls were being painted. And the windows sealed shut.

She let the door slam shut behind her and cast a quick air-cleaning spell. It wouldn’t affect more than a small bubble around her, but even that was enough to make her take a deep sigh of sweet, odorless relief.

The shop itself was a teenage colt’s paradise. Racks upon racks of comics, either crammed into boxes to rifle through for three bits a piece or lovingly preserved in sealed plastic with price tags that made her eyes bug out. Low shelves sat cluttered with board games and novelty collectibles and enough dice to build a fort out of. There were even a couple of tables in the far corner with a small fridge covered in stickers and a kiosk of alarmingly greasy-looking food under a flickering heat lamp. One of the tables was occupied by a trio of teens who looked to be in the middle of a heated argument about some game they were playing with lots of colorful tokens.

In short, the perfect place to find a Hearth's Warming present for her BBBFF.

"Hey... uh... are you lost?"

She startled slightly and turned to the till, where stood a bored stallion who stood so still she hadn't noticed him at all. He looked, as Best Foalsitter Ever Cadence had once put it, ‘like he’d rolled a nat one on puberty’. Aside from the messy mane and unorthodox choice in piercings (thank you again, Word-a-Day calendar), what struck her most was his glazed over expression. Like he wasn’t wholly there and was looking past her at something else.

"No," she replied. It was true. She knew exactly where she was and where she intended to be.

The cashier continued to stare, glassy eyed and all but expressionless until some mental gear clicked into place. "Oh. You want My Little Simians? Back of aisle… three, I think. Not much there, but we got some trading cards, a few blind bags…" He trailed off with a shrug, returning to the blank glassy stare that seemed to be his default expression.

"No thanks. I'm buying a present for my big brother."

After another delay that was just long enough to feel awkward, the teenage colt shrugged again. "Whatever. Lemme know if you need anything. Or don't. I don't care." And he returned to staring at nothing, like a mechanical golem deprived of magic to run it.

Twilight put him out of her mind. She had a job to do.

She moved through the shop with single-minded focus. The shelf of Orges & Oubliettes paraphernalia was tempting, but she already had a target in mind. In between the shelf of Saddlebag Beast cards and Spines of Steel V expansion kits lay her target. Occupying nearly a whole aisle by themselves were dozens of colorful boxes depicting stallions in heavy armor fighting off all kinds of creatures on alien landscapes.

The latest craze to take the youth of Canterlot, Shining Armor included. Combat-Mallet Fifty Thousand.

Or, as Shiny insisted all the cool colts called it, “CM50k”.

She cast her eyes over the varied selection, names and factions springing to mind as she connected the more artistic renditions to the photos in Shiny’s magazine.

‘This faction is the Yacs,’ she could practically hear his voice in her head, gushing with excitement as he explained his newest hobby. ‘That’s with a ‘c’, not a ‘k’. Most of them have pretty low power ratings, but that just means you can field a lot at once and the rarer ones can buff each other. Gaffer likes to set up his armies with as many as he can then crush my tactics with one big SMAAASH! attack. Yeah, I do have to yell. It’s actually a rule.’

Twilight moved past the Yac Warboss model, the Changeanids, and the Crystal Necron forces as she let herself slip fully into the memory.

Her head bobbed as he turned the page. Balancing herself precariously between his shoulder and the high back of the overstuffed armchair wasn’t the most comfortable spot, but it was the best angle to read over his shoulder without having to pull another chair in from the kitchen.

“This one’s an Imperial Starmage,” Shining continued, “Just look at those stats.”

She did look at those stats. Half of the page that wasn’t a glossy picture of a mare in armoured robes was occupied by a grid filled with columns of numbers, abbreviations, and text in very small font. It certainly looked impressive, but she still only had a very surface level understanding of what most of it meant. Her BBBFF, in his eagerness to share, kept getting distracted whenever he tried to explain the core mechanics. Her knowledge was patchwork, but slowly knitting together into a few cohesive ideas the more of the magazine they went through.

“Are they also Empire?” she asked. Trying to keep all the different factions straight was easier than the stats since they had shared design elements, but there were still over a dozen of them.

“No, they’re C’au.” he corrected.

She added that tidbit to her growing collection of knowledge. It was fun, hanging out with her big brother like this. And the math was fun too; all the different stats and figures and spell classifications and armor ratings, even if she didn’t quite get when they needed to be used. Or actually how to play yet. But it was nice to spend some quiet time with him in any case, especially before all the hectic part of the holidays kicked in.

An idea came to her. Naturally, it was a good idea so she acted on it immediately. “So which one’s the best?”

“Of the C’au?”

“Of all of them.”

He laughed. “If it were that easy, everyone would just play that and nothing else. All the minis have their strengths and weaknesses. The real trick to winning is building a solid team that can cover each other’s faults. That’s why they call it a battlefield strategy game.”

That much she knew, but it didn’t answer the real question. “Okay, but which one’s your favorite?”

“Oh that’s easy.” He flipped his way through the pages to one with a dog eared corner. A single full-color, glossy picture dominated both pages, so large that he had to turn the magazine sideways to display it right.

“The Golden Custodian Maximus.”

She scrunched up her nose in confusion and frowned. “Your favorite is a metal janitor?”

He laughed again and tousled her mane. “It's a special rank in that unit's lore. Even if you put aside his crazy combat potential alone, he has a 6" aura of giving a 5-up feel-no-pain, and gives full rerolls to hit and wound in combat to everyone around him.”

“Is it that good?”

“It's a game changer. One that can turn a scrub deck into a trouncer.” Again, she frowned as he continued to use words she didn't understand and failed to explain them. “It's the best piece for players who are just starting out and can't field as many units at once as more advanced players.”

“I see,” Twilight replied, and quickly moved on to talking about another piece. But gears were already turning in her mind.

Twilight shook her head and snapped back to the present. This was no time for woolgathering. She was on a mission to get Shiny his favorite tiny plastic stallion.

The only problem, as she soon discovered, was she couldn't find the stupid thing!

She searched the aisle up and down, from Adeptus Junior Engineer to Xenophage Blademistress. They had normal custodians, mechanical custodians, corrupted custodians, and furless custodians, but not a single Golden Custodian to be found, maximus or otherwise.

She was nearly ready to give up when she finally caught a glint of gold out the corner of her eye. It sat alone on its own private display in the very last place she thought to look: just left of the register and the clerk whose lights were still on with nobody home.

I took only fifteen steps to reach the counter. So focused was she that the ringing of the bell on the door went totally unnoticed to her.

She craned her neck as she reached the counter and coughed just in case he couldn't see her over the edge. “One Golden Custodian Maximus, please.”

“Um actually, I think I'll be taking that.”

She nearly leaped out of her skin as a voice came from behind her. She turned around quickly to see the pony who’d just entered the shop.

At first she thought he was old, but after a second realized that the grey stripes in his limp black mane that hung like a wet curtain were natural. On a second glance he looked much closer to her brother’s age, at most a year or two older with the acne scars to prove it. And fresh acne too. His trenchcoat looked worn and a little too big and the shirt beneath promoted a band she’d never heard of in a font she could barely read. He smelt of french fries and catsup.

She tried to give him a smile. “Sorry, but I asked first.”

He snorted hard enough to shift the long bangs that hung down either side of his face. “Yeah right. As if a filly like you could have any idea what that miniature figurine is worth.”

“It's not for me,” she clarified, “it's for my brother. He needs it to turn his army from a sub into a bouncer.” Was that right? It sounded mostly right but she’d only heard him say it once.

In response to her totally normal explanation, the strange teen’s eyes bugged out of his head and started breathing heavily just like Grandpa Sparkle when he wanted to make a fuss and faked a heart attack.

“You're going to take it out of the packaging? Are you insane!?”

She reeled back from his unexpected ferocity. “What— what else would you do with it?”

He scoffed. “Obviously you leave it in mint condition, keep it in a temperature and humidity controlled storage, then resell it in twenty or thirty years as a rare out-of-print collectible, like any normal sane pony would do. Which is exactly what I'm going to do with it.”

That made… absolutely no sense.

Twilight tried to wrap her mind around the idea, but it just would not compute. It was a toy. Toys were meant to be played with. That was their most basic purpose. What kind of pony could grow up to be as old as him and not understand something so obvious? It boggled her mind.

Then there was the matter of his line-cutting, which was one of the worst crimes she knew.

“But you can’t buy it. I was here first. And it's my big brother's favorite.”

“Tough toenails, squirt. You’re as likely to get this fig as a Lunar Templar is to spare a heretic.” With that, he stepped forward and slid her out of the way like she was nothing more than a piece on a chessboard. In that one move, something ignited in Twilight’s young soul. An anger like she’d never known. The full righteous fury of a child who knows something is wrong but lacks the power to stop it. He was taking something that was fairly hers. No, not from her, but from her brother. Practically snatching it out of his hooves! This would not, could not, stand.

The teen behind the till blinked as if he only just this very minute realized there was somepony nearby. “Hey... it's Quibble. When did you get here?” Apparently she wasn’t far off the mark.

The now-named Quibble rolled his eyes. “Minutes ago, Skunk. Now bounce your two brain cells together and ring me up for that Golden Custodian Maximus.”

Skunk’s eyes slowly followed the pointing hoof up with all the energy of an anesthetized sloth. Then they descended just as languidly. “What'd'ya want that for? It's just an empty box.”

“Not the display, obviously. An actual model. From the back.”

“Oh.” He then proceeded to not move.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Are you going to get it or not?”

Skunk blinked like a revolving door. “Oh. Nah, sorry man, we're out of stock. Totally sold out.”

“Out of stock?” Quibble sputtered, looking like he was about to pop a blood vessel. “How?!”

“Yeah, craziest thing. Apparently they sold so many through magazine orders or something that they had to recall a load from the shops to fill them all. Then some guy came around a few days ago and bought up most of what was left.” He shrugged. “Said something about flipping them, or something.”

Twilight chose this moment to lever herself up onto the counter and her hooftips and remind them of her presence. “So you don't have any left?”

“Not here.” For a moment, his eyes seemed to focus, as if some spark of insight had finally bridged the gap between his thoughts. “But one of the other gaming shops in town might have one left if you hurry.”

Twilight and Quibble’s eyes met as, for a mere heartbeat, their thoughts echoed each other perfectly.

They sprang for the door at the same moment.

Twilight’s hooves pounded the cobblestones beneath her as she dashed her way through the streets of Canterlot. She wasn’t terribly athletic, but she had youth and energy and her mom’s hearty breakfast on her side. The stallion she was racing on the other hoof, despite being bigger and older clearly wasn’t in great shape. They'd only gone a few blocks and already he was panting like a racehorse.

Yet still he managed to keep his lead thanks to the simple fact that for every two steps he took, she needed three.

“Beat it kid,” he yelled back, “that figure is mine! It's gonna pay my rent in twenty years!”

His incendiary words drove her to run faster. As she rounded the corner, the next shop came into view directly in line with the mouth of the alley they were cutting through. But with his clear lead, it was obvious Quibble was going to make it well ahead of her.

Acting quickly, Twilight reached out with her magic and grabbed hold of the gutter that ran along the building’s eaves. She couldn’t muster much fine control while running, but she still had more than enough raw strength to give it a good shake and send a pile of balanced snow plummeting down to earth right atop Quibble.

She squeaked around the edge of the snowdrift (and the two thrashing legs searching for purchase) and quickly entered the shop.

The inside of the cleverly named High Roller was like a light mirrored version of the Card Shark Gaming Emporium. The layout of shelves and products was nearly identical, but every free inch of space that didn’t have a product was instead crammed to bursting with Hearth's Warming decorations. Like the universe had tried to balance the other shop’s lack of holiday spirit by overloading this one’s. It also didn’t smell nearly as bad. It still had a smell, but it was more like somepony had accidentally punctured cans of pine- and peppermint- and gingerbread-scented air fresheners and let them empty out.

“Why hello there!” gushed a young mare from behind the counter. She was just as decorated as the shop itself, with a colorful holiday sweater and tree baubles hanging in her mane. “Welcome to High Roller where every roll is a natural twenty! My name’s Polar, but you can call me Pole! What’s yours?”

“Twilight. I was wondering—”

“Twilight, oh that’s a lovely name! Adorable! Reminds me of a character I played in a Dark Horse-y campaign once, Aurora Glint. She was an arcane enchantress vampony. Made it all the way to level fifteen on a three year campaign before she fell to a mimic.” Pole’s giddy expression faltered for a second before flickering back to joy. “But who cares about the past? The present’s where it’s at! And speaking of the present, it’s a lovely day for a bit of holiday shopping, don’t you think? The brisk air is so invigorating and the snow makes all the decorations seem all the more colorful!”

“Yes, but I—” Twilight tried to make her case, but again was cut off.

“And you get to meet so many interesting ponies this time of year,” she continued, seemingly immune to the need for air. “So many ponies who’d never normally come into a shop like this but need to get a special present for somepony on their list! It’s just so sweet and, well, heartwarming!”

“Exactly. Like me, I—”

“Why, you just missed the most touching scene! A little colt was here not ten minutes ago pleading with us to sell him a CM50k figurine for a family member of his. But when he didn't have nearly enough bits, a kind stallion stepped up and paid for him!” She sighed dreamily and fanned her face. “Such splendid Hearth's Warming spirit for such a generous gentlestallion. I wish I’d gotten his number.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but—”

“Though I do wonder, now that I think about it, just what does his mother being sick and going to meet Princess Celestia have to do with tabletop wargames? Maybe the princess plays too? You'd think she wouldn't have the time. But I suppose everypony has their private hobbies.”

Twilight had heard of talking to a brick wall before, but this was ridiculous. She couldn't get a word in edgewise as the overly-friendly mare rattled off every thought that entered her head. She needed to find a way to break through while she still had a head start on—

Quibble burst through the door, sending a hundred bells jingling with the wind he whipped up. He’d gotten most of the snow off, but the brim of his trilby had a new icy crest and his trenchcoat was blotchy with wet patches.

The moment he entered, the festive atmosphere seemed to dim, but it took Twilight a moment to realize why. Pole had stopped smiling. More than that, she was scowling.

“No.” The cheer was gone and her voice was downright icy. “Out.”

Quibble fixed an awkward smile on his face that didn’t quite fit. He half-raised a hoof as if to wave, but changed his mind and put it down. “Oh… Hey Pressi. I didn’t know you’d be working today.”

“Out!” she demanded. “Out of the shop!”

He raised his hooves and wings disarmingly. “Chill out, Pressi, no need to go all exterminatus on me. I know we didn’t part on great terms but I’m still a paying customer.”

“No you’re not! You are banned, Quibble Pants. Banned for life!

His fake smile faltered to reveal the frown that sat more naturally. “No I’m not! The manager said you didn’t have the authority!”

Pole polished her hooves against her vest. “Well he’s on vacation in Bitaly, so I’m acting manager and I say you’re banned.” She reached over to one of the nearby shelves of merch and grabbed a plush hammer, then threw it at him like she was Rockhoof at the Battle of Soaring Fury.

He dodged. Barely.

“Be reasonable!”

“This is me being reasonable!” she yelled as she threw another. “If you’re still here when I run out of plushies, I’m moving up to pewter models!”

He took shelter between a vending machine and a holiday tree. “Look, just sell me a Golden Custodian Maximus and I’ll go! That’s all I want!”

Pole laughed, which sounded the same and yet so much darker than when she’d been in a good mood. “Too bad! You rolled a nat one on your luck! I just sold the last one to a sweet little colt. Hopeful he won’t grow up into a two-timing jerk like you!

Hearing that, Twilight took it as her cue to leave. There was no sense waiting around and wasting her time if they didn’t even have any more of the model. As she slipped back out through the door, she caught one last shriek of “Hold still! You can’t dodge my Ban Hammer forever!” before the door clicked shut.

She gave the shop and the odd couple one last look before shaking her head and running off to the next game store.

Teenagers were weird.

How was it possible that every store managed to sell their last model minutes before she got there?! It was statistically unbelievable!

Four stores now she’d tried, and it was already a surprise that Canterlot even had that many gaming stores. Two of them she’d only found by following Quibble when he ran off in an unexpected direction. And yet, without fail, every last one was sold out of the one model she needed for Shiny’s army!

And now there was only one shop left (unless she could convince her parents to take a last-minute trip to Baltimare, where the company that made CM50k had its headquarters, without explaining to them why).

The final shop, the Automaton’s Attic, was a mere three blocks away but Quibble had a significant lead on her thanks to a nasty trick he pulled, tricking a group of pensioners into thinking she was a lost child. She knew exactly where she was, thank you very much!

“Stop following me, you little twerp!” he yelled back at her.

“I’m not following you! We’re just going to the same place!” she hollered back.

“Yeah, well, I-” was as much as he got out before—exactly as Twilight had seen coming when he turned to yell—he ran face first into a golden wall.

Quibble bounced back like a rubber ball, rubbing his muzzle as he hissed in pain. “Hey! Watch where you’re going you… oh.”

The Royal Guard, in full dress uniform no less, towered over him as big as a mountain and just as stone-cold serious. “Is there a problem?”

“N-No! Sir! No sir, no problem here! I’m sorry! I-I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Hmph.” He raised an eyebrow like a tectonic plate. “Alright. Be careful where you’re going next time.”

Quibble nearly fell over himself apologizing. “Yes sir, of course, right. I definitely will.” He made to walk around him, only to be stopped by an armored foreleg.

“Whoa there, kiddo. Don’t you know Mac lane’s closed today?”

“Closed?” A hint of his usual anger bled through his fear. “Why? Since when? I need to cross it!”

“Geez, open your eyes," he said as Twilight zipped under and past him. "Can't you see the parade?"

Twilight had just enough time for the word 'parade' to percolate through her word association before she was suddenly underhoof of a hundred ponies marching in uniform.

Shouts of alarm and shock trailed behind her in a chaotic path as she charted a panicked course through the identically dressed ponies. Tassels to the left, tassels to the right. Polished brass buttons and red velvet uniforms forming a cornfield-like maze on every side with no exit in sight.

“Sorry!” she cried, the first in a string of a thousand excuses, apologies, and explanations that blurred together into a meaningless mush of sound (which was almost entirely drowned out anyway by their instruments).

Then she spotted it. Like a lighthouse guiding lost ships through the storm, high above the crowd rose an edifice of wood and bronze paint. The plywood robot that straddled the game shop’s sign, beckoning customers in with a looping mechanized wave. She pushed all other distractions away and made a beeline for it. In under a minute she was free from the crowd and back safe, if shaken, on the far side of the street from where she started. But that didn’t mean she had time to rest.

Twilight burst through the doors of the Automaton’s Attic and slammed them shut behind her, adrenaline still pumping through her veins. Through the mechanical attraction on the roof was a little corny, the inside revealed it was the nicest-looking of the games shops she’d visited. Dark wood paneling gave it a cozy, more intimate feel, and the layout looked like it might have used to be a bar. A portly unicorn with a full beard and a bald head gave her a smile.

“Hey there little missy, where's the fire?”

She tried to answer, but she hadn’t had enough time to recover from her final panicked sprint. Her words came out broken between gulps of sweet restoring air. “Need... Golden Cus... cus…”

“A Golden Custodian?” he asked, his face colored with surprise.

“Maximus.”

“Are you sure that's the one you want?”

“Yes.” After the day she’d had, she was not about to give up now. “For big brother. Hearth's Warming.”

“Ah, gotcha. You're in luck, I have one left in stock.” Twilight felt her heart soar as he pulled one out from beneath the counter. The gold of its armor shone like Celestia's very sun. “You know, your brother's a real lucky fellow to have a sister like you. I’m the oldest of five myself, and I know none of my sisters would have ever bought me something like this.” His cash register dinged a cherry tune as he tapped it repeatedly, before he carefully placed the figurine in a bag. It was finally happening! Her goal was in sight! Quibble was trapped behind a parade and Shiny’s present was only steps away! Nothing could stop her now!

“That'll be two hundred bits.”

In an instant, Twilight’s body locked in place. An icy chill of dread swept down her spine and froze the blood in her veins as thoroughly as if she’d jumped in the Canter river. Two hundred bits. That was over five months worth of her allowance.

She didn’t have that kind of money! She didn’t know anyone with that kind of money! She knew the figure was rare and special, but what kind of company could justify charging that much for a piece of plastic?! For that price she’d have expected real, solid gold!

“That... I can't afford that!”

“That's what I've been saying.” Twilight jumped in surprise as Quibble’s voice came from behind her. She hadn’t even noticed him come in. He was breathing and his mane had been forced back into a windswept shape that was actually more flattering than his usual style, but the angry look she was used to had softened. “This isn't a toy for little kids. This is an investment for serious collectors.” He reached into the depths of his trenchcoat and pulled out a bag of bits. It dropped on the counter with a clattering jingle. “Two hundred. Thank you very much.” With that, he snatched up the prepared bag, turned on a heel, and left.

Twilight watched him go. Watched him leave into the cold Canterlot afternoon with her prize tucked securely under one wing. The prize she had never had a chance to actually win to begin with. She hung her head as all her holiday plans came crashing down. She’d been so dead set on getting her big brother this one specific gift that she hadn’t made any back-up plans at all. No secondary idea in case this fell through. She didn’t even know what his second favorite model was.

“Hey kid, you gonna be alright?”

She glanced up to the shopkeeper and sniffled back her emotions. He was a stranger, but she still didn’t want him to see her cry. She was supposed to be too old for that sort of thing.

“Yeah, I guess. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to give him for Hearth’s Warming now.”

He stroked his beard, deep in thought. “Lemme ask you something. Your brother, does he play competitively or just casually?”

She had to think about it for a moment. “Casually, I think? He plays with his friends after school.”

“I see, I see.” A little twinkle entered his eye as he continued to stroke his beard. “Apropos of nothing, here's a little known fact about the Gaming Workcentre. They use the same molds for both their golden custodians and the regular ones.”

Twilight nodded, though she didn’t really see the point. Trivia was all well and good, but Shining Armor had plenty of normal custodian minis already. He didn’t need more of them.

“Another fun fact,” he continued, “A bottle of gold model paint and a standard custodian model cost five and seven bits apiece.”

It took a moment for his words to seep in past the haze of fading adrenaline and emotionally crushing despair, but once they did, understanding blossomed like dawn on Hearth’s Warming morning as Twilight put together what he was trying to say. A small but vibrant smile grew on her face. “I think that’s a lot more in my price range.”

The stallion chuckled and walked out from behind the counter before gesturing to a small, somewhat paint-splattered alcove tucked away in a corner. “Happy to have your business. The name’s Pappy. You ever used an airbrush before?”

She shook her head no.

“Then now's a perfect time to learn.”

“Thanks Granny, it’s a lovely sweater,” Shining Armor said through a smile that was as plastic as the miniature ornaments hanging from the sleeves of his latest present. One that was going in the way back of his closet and definitely nowhere near anywhere where any of his friends might see it. Their teasing would be insane.

All friendly mocking, of course. And he’d give as good as he got if Gaffer or Eight Bit showed up to their next game night in an embarrassing outfit forced on by their well-meaning aunts or grannies. That’s how friendship worked in high school.

Setting aside the sweater that was somehow both too snug and too loose at the same time, he turned to the next gift in his pile. There was nothing about it that made it particularly stand out from the rest, but he could still tell it was from Twilight without having to read the tag. No one else would cut and fold the wrapping paper to such mathematically exact angles.

In time honored Hearth’s Warming tradition, he ripped into it like a hungry wildebeest.

Then his breath caught in his throat.

A model in miniature of a stallion. A battleworn cloak. Pauldrons bigger than shields. A gigantic halberd that practically screamed its readiness to rip and tear into some xenos. A raised base with terrain. All a beautiful, lustrous gold.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. A Golden Custodian Maximus. Wordlessly, he brought it closer to take in all the details he never dreamed he’d be able to see outside a magazine. The grooves and exhaust ports in its sidearm. The scars on its face. The elegant scrollwork along the edges of the base. Even the tiny script writ upon the crest of its cloak was perfectly legible.

The paint job looked… honestly a little sloppy, but if that wasn’t the mark of an official Gaming Workcentre product, what was?

“Do… Do you like it?”

He tore himself away from it and turned his attention to his little sister. His favorite little sister (not that there’d ever been much contest).

“Twily, I…” He tried to put his thoughts into words, but they just wouldn’t come. He finally settled on a simple, “How?”

She squirmed in her nest of books and torn wrapping paper. “I had to go to a couple of shops to find it. But it’s not…” She hesitated, scrunched up her cheeks, sighed, and continued. “But it’s not a real Golden Custodian Maximus. It’s just a normal one with a custom paint job. So it’s not valid for official tournaments, but Mr. Pappy who runs the shop promised me that it’s fine for friendly games. So that’s almost as good, right?” She finished off her rushed explanation with an almost desperate pleading look.

He set down the minifig (though not as carefully as he’d have handled an actual multi-hundred bit figure) and swept her up onto the chair with him before she could get any more sad.

“I love it, Twily,” he spoke softly to her. “Not because of how rare or special it is, but because you took the time and effort to get something that you knew would be special to me. Now come here!”

He pulled her into a hug as their extended family gushed at the cuteness of the scene. That was fine. His teenage pride could take being called cute for his sister’s sake. Before they parted, he whispered in her ear. “After dinner tonight, let’s set up a game. I should have enough minis for two small armies now, so I can properly teach you the rules.”

Her vigorous nodding was more than enough of an answer.

So what if it wasn’t a real GCM? Gaffer and his Yac army wouldn’t know the difference.