PonyRunner pushed himself back from the computer, laid back his head, and covered his face with his hands. He was shaking from the adrenaline and stress. But it was over. He’d done it.
That had to have been close.
“Was that damageless?!” said the Dash guy.
He really should learn that guy’s name.
“I think so…” he said. His voice came muffled through his hands.
Gage brought his lapel mic closer to his mouth.
“Can someone on the tech bench tell us what time that was?”
PonyRunner almost didn’t want to hear it. He couldn’t manage more stress.
With Celestia defeated – load bearing boss that she was – the castle began to crumble around a. The unicorn turned from the rubble and slowly trotted away, out of the demolished throne room, out of the castle, out of Equestria, and into the credits.
“The time was…” said the announcer, “45 minutes, 58.95 seconds”.
“Well, that’s definitely a PB…” he said. There was some applause, and a little chat spam.
“It’s also world record by 6 seconds.”
Everyone went wild. He collapsed in his chair.
Gage grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him gently.
“Congrats, dude. That was a perfect run”.
“Well, I wouldn’t say perfect…”
The Dash Guy was standing beside him too. The premonitions of a frown graced PonyRunner’s forehead.
“But pretty damn close”, he smiled. “Better practice that drop clip for next run”.
PonyRunner was smiling too. He stood up. One guy at the back yelled “Speech!”
After that run, a speech seemed like the easiest thing in the world.
“Thank you to everyone who watched and donated. I’m so happy I got the chance to show off this run live and support this great cause. Shoutouts to the couch, the HiE Discord. I know we make fun of this game and rag on it a lot… but I wouldn’t keep coming back to it unless there was something really… special about it. I dunno what it is, but it’s pretty magical.
“I think everyone should give it a shot, even if it’s just once. Even if it’s just a quick run, a full playthrough, whatever, give it a try. And if you want to start running the game, there’s plenty of tutorials out there. We have side categories, like Larson% where you just rush the alicorn quest. And Smile% is exactly like this run but shorter; you get to Pinkie, you clip inside her hitbox, and that kills you somehow.”
There was laughter and cheering. He put his arms over the shoulders of his two couch commentators (with, admittedly, a little hover-handing).
“That’s everything. Thanks for having us! You can cut us off now.”
And they did.
“Thanks to PonyRunner and crew for the great run, and congrats on the world record!” said the announcer, cueing the OC remix playlist, “coming up next we have a run of Prey 2020 by Kkat. That’s going to be a very interesting run…“
Somewhere, buried beneath the rubble, a small part of Celestia wondered whether he should really be celebrating, considering she wasn’t actually dead yet.
A much larger, louder part of her told her to shut up and let him have this, unless she wanted him to finish the job.
~The End~