Egg Scramble

by SilverNotes

Pickled

"Okay, walk me through it again..."

The two brothers were sat at a table, several sheets of paper between them. The Crystal palace's war room had been converted into a gaming room a long while back, but some old remnants of the previous purpose could be seen.

The walls of the room were etched with numerous depictions of historic battles, ones that had been old history even in the Crystal Empire's original time period. The table itself looked ancient, its crystal worn down and scratched in several places, and was large enough to sit at least a dozen ponies around it. The holders were still about for the candles whose flickering flames would have normally given the room the appropriate level of gravitas for planning battle, even if lighting was instead now handled by glow-gems.

There was a stack of books off to one side, four thick tomes and several slightly thinner ones, all in an array of colours. One particularly colourful one was grasped in Shining Armour's horn glow, the with a cover of red and gold and the words Nyx: The Dreaming proudly displayed along the top.

"Okay," Shining Armour said with the firm confidence of a stallion accustomed to commanding forces and solving enigmas with equal measure. "First you select your nyx's court, legacy, seeming, and their house if they're a noble."

Spike nodded hesitantly. "Okay."

"Then you distribute points between your nine attributes. You get one point in each by default. Then you distribute points to your talents, your skills, and your knowledges."

"...Right." Spike looked down at the character sheet with the same expression he'd normally have if he'd found a second Inspiration Manifestation.

"Then you pick out your backgrounds, your arts, and your realms."

"Um." He found the right part of the sheet, looking it over. "Which is which with the arts and realms again?"

With the tone of somepony who'd had this conversation many times and refined his answer with each go around. "The arts are what your nyx can do with magic, and the realms are what you can do the magic to."

"Uh..huh... Okay..."

"And then there's the merits and flaws, which are optional but really fun, the specialties, if you qualify for any, and..." Shining Armour looked up from the book. "I lost you again, huh?"

Spike smiled weakly. "Kinda."

Shining Armour set the book down, smiling back. "It's fine, first character is always a bit of a learning curve. How about you join my Vampony: the Masquerade group instead? That one's a pretty good gateway game, and then we can come back to this one later."

Spike chuckled. "Yeah, that might be a good idea. It's been a while since since I had to learn a whole new system."

Shining pulled out the appropriate book, and the two went over the system again, piece by piece. Appendixes were flipped to, obscure rules looked up, ideas for how a rare and supposedly dead bloodline of vamponies could be brought into a typical group of anti-heroic undead struggling with their natures, along with hashing out what would happen if vamponyism infected something that wasn't a pony at all.

It brought him back to his days playing O&O with the guys back in Ponyville. Discord had certainly made the experience... unforgettable, but he still looked back on that gaming group fondly. He'd learned a surprising amount of friendship lessons of his own around that table.

Shining placed the book back in the pile. "So, with that settled, what can I really do for you, little bro?"

Spike rubbed the back of his neck, leaning back in the chair, the crystal of it managing to hold his bulk for now. "Yeah, I guess it was kinda transparent that we're here for help, huh?"

"Kinda. Then again, I'm pretty good at reading both you and Twily like a book by now." Shining chuckled. "But I'm always happy to help out my Little Dragon Brother Best Friend Forever. So what's eating you?"

Spike took in a deep, steadying breath. "Well, Ember and I have been talking about maybe settling down--"

Shining's hoof came up as he grinned. "Say no more! It'll be my honour to plan your bachelor party."

"Wait, no, that's not--"

"Have you told Twily yet? Pretty sure asking her to be your best mare only smooths over her being the last pony to know about the wedding the first time it happens."

"No no!" Spike nearly fell from the chair as he frantically flailed his limbs at Shining. "We haven't planned anything like that yet. We've just been talking about what that future might look like, that's all."

Shining's grin didn't waver. "Right right. But just so you know, when the time comes, I've got you covered."

"Thanks, Shining." It was somewhat comforting to know his big brother had his back for an eventual wedding, but that still left the real issue, and he took in another deep breath before diving in. "What I was really hoping for was some parenting advice, though. Since we're thinking about the future, we also thought about kids being part of it. But with me being an ambassador, I'm not going to be around as much. Since you'd been going between Equestria and the Crystal Empire for a lot of Flurry Heart's foalhood, I figured you might have some tips."

Shining's smile faded to a more serious expression, and his ears twitched in thought. Eventually he placed both front hooves on the table. "Here's one thing I had to learn the hard way: Not every day needs to be a special day."

Spike blinked, tilting his head in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Well..." The embarrassed smile of lessons learned from experience took hold on Shining's face. "Early on, I'd feel guilty about having so little days off, so I'd try to do something big when I did see her. Take her places, give her treats, that kind of thing."

Spike nodded slowly. "Well, yeah. That makes sense. Doing something nice to apologise."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking at the time too. Thing was?" He waved a hoof in the air, as if plucking a memory from it. "A while of that and I eventually had an upset foal in the middle of a fairground because all she'd wanted to do was sit and have me read a book to her."

Eyes widened as the memory also hit Spike's mind. It'd been a extended family outing, one of the few times everyone could get time off together. At the time, he hadn't understood why they'd all ended up with a bawling alicorn foal sitting in the middle of the park. "...Oh."

"Right. That's why Flurry had a meltdown that day. I'd been doing too much, and hadn't picked up that she was getting overstimulated." He sighed, shaking his head at himself. "Fancy trips and gifts aren't a substitute for quality time. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to just make time to tuck them in at night. You might not think it's special, but they do."

"True. I did always like when Dad read to me and did the voices. And he wasn't even away that much." A fond, nostalgic smile came across his face. "And, hay, when I come see Ember most of the time we just stay in and I trounce her at board games."

Shining chuckled. "Maybe you should bring her for the vampony campaign too. Always room for one more."

Spike shrugged. "I could ask her, but she's usually pretty social-ed out by the time she's done with her subjects. Always been kind of an introvert, you know?" He hummed in thought. "Come to think of it, that's why we started to do board game nights. I tried taking her out to nice dinners the first few times and she was way too exhausted to enjoy herself."

Shining nodded. "See? It's an easy pitfall. You think you've got to be Super-partner, or Superdad, to compensate for the distance, but what you really just need to do when you're there is... be there."

"Heh. Yeah. I was probably going to pull a Twilight and try to have the best family outing ever and it'd blow up in my face." He made an explosion motion with his claws for emphasis, 'fwshoom' sound effect and all. "Cannonball dodged. Thanks."

"That's what big brothers are for." Shining looked at him then, as if studying him closely. "Now, what's really eating you?"

"Huh?" Spike blinked. "I told you, I came here for parenting advice."

"That's not what I asked." He leaned forward a bit, his ears rotating to face Spike. "I asked what's bothering you. I can tell there's more to it than just that."

Spike suddenly knew what it must feel for for other creatures, being detained and questioned by guards who knew when they were dodging answering. Though at least his big brother didn't have anything on Pinkie Pie's brand of disorientating interrogation. "I mean. I um. You know." He sighed. "Answer honestly, Shining: Do you even think I'd be a good dad?"

He looked surprised. "Well, yeah, of course. You've always been good with foals."

"Yeah. Foals. Not drakes." He huffed a heavier sigh. "I don't know anything about the psychology, what the milestones are... Every dragon I've ever met has said that my aging was weird. I'd always been mistaken for younger than I am, there's the whole greed growth fiasco--"

"And you're also the dragon who stood side-by-side with the Bearers of Harmony, had a key part in saving the Crystal Empire, helped crown the current Dragon Lord, helped negotiate peace between the Abyssinians and the Diamond Dogs..." Shining smirked. "Should I go on?"

"...No, I get the point." He stretched his wings idly, flapping them a couple of times. "Ember said pretty much the same thing. That I turned out fine, so just do what Mom and Dad did."

"Yeah, and you should listen to me." Spike looked over in surprise as Ember strolled into the war room, with Cadance on her heels. "I keep telling you you're a pretty great dragon, and a whole lot of creatures in a whole lot of nations would agree with me."

Cadance, meanwhile, spied the pile of books and laughed. "Oh no, Shiny, are you trying to get Spike into Ponies of Shadows?"

Shining put his hooves up in mock defensiveness. "He asked what I was playing lately and I told him! The follow-up character creation was all his idea."

Seizing the opportunity for the subject change, Spike piped up, "He told me about your vampony, Cadance! And about how she once threw a carriage at a weretimberwolf."

"The weretimberwolf had it coming," Cadance said without missing a beat as she plopped down in a seat near Shining. "He threatened my favourite blood donor and made fun of my outfit."

Shining snorted. "Yeah, and you looked more upset about the outfit."

"It was designer!"

Ember's eye ridge raised as she moved over to take a seat as well. "What are you all talking about?"

Shining's eyes lit up, shortly followed by him grabbing up the vampony book again. "Let me show you!"

"Here we go..."

As Cadance continued to mock-protest and Shining started to recite lore to an increasingly confused Ember, Spike smiled. His family were, to a one, a bunch of royal dorks, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

But a tight knot of tension still sat in his chest at the idea of adding to it.